


flowers that lose their shape

by Anzie (anzie)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Instability, Minor Character Death, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 05:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzie/pseuds/Anzie
Summary: In an arena of twenty-four tributes, the Annual Hunger Games are an excuse for one district to exalt themselves as better than the rest. Or at least, that's what the Capitol tells them.In reality, the tributes are a constant reminder of the axe hanging perilously over everyone's head, an unspoken demand for each person to keep their silence.Yuuri's just a pawn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started working on this last summer, if you can believe it. It's almost finished at this point - there are a few kinks I need to iron out, but I figured I might as well start posting it now or I'll never get it out. ^^; It's a 40k thing split up into 4 to 5 parts (I haven't decided yet!), and I should be posting every Friday-Saturday!
> 
> If you haven't read or seen the Hunger Games, you won't necessarily need to; I do include standout characters from the series - like Caesar Flickerman and President Snow - but only because to my knowledge you can't really have the Games without either of them. Besides, I'm having a hard time villainising any of the YoI characters. To sum it up: Caesar's a host - think Jimmy Fallon in sparkly suits and a single-color theme every year. President Snow is the mastermind behind the whole Games, using it to oppress the Districts and suppress rebellion. 
> 
> If you _have_ seen/read the series, this fic takes inspiration from the story of Finnick and Annie, but with my own take. 
> 
> Happy reading.

Yuuri is ten when Viktor Nikiforov wins the sixty-third Hunger Games, the gold trident in his hand crowning him a victor long before President Snow ever did. Curled up on Minako’s couch in the Victor’s Village with a pillow cuddled to his chest, Yuuri watches Viktor stride across the stage with all the power and grace of a born swimmer, his shoulders thrown back in defiance against death who claimed his peers.

At fourteen, with his long silver hair and brilliant blue eyes, Viktor is so bright and beautiful that it almost hurt when Minako says, “They’re going to eat him alive.”

“What do you mean, sensei?” Yuuri says, tilting his head up at his mentor. Her lips are pressed thin as she watches Viktor wave at the crowds with an effusive smile on his face. It's different from all the smiles Yuuri's used to seeing from Viktor's interview before the Games began, but he can't put a finger on why. Minako's knuckles are white, her hand curled in the fabric of her loose pants. Yuuri inches a little closer to his mentor nervously. “Minako?”

A muscle in her cheek jumps when she clenches her jaw and smiles too-wide. “It’s nothing, Yuuri. Just a crazed woman’s musings. Ignore me.” Her hand reaches out and strokes over Yuuri’s hair. It’s trembling, and Yuuri blinks at her. He knows her enough to recognize when she’s angry, or upset, but her eyes are so soft that Yuuri decides that it’s okay.

Nodding, he curls up close to her and returns his gaze to the celebrations onscreen. Viktor blows a kiss into the audience, his grin blinding. Someone throws District Four’s new victor a white rose. With the curve of his lips and a wink tossed into the crowd, Viktor brings it to his nose for a delicate sniff. Yuuri studies him closely, and decides that the caged look that took over Viktor's eyes during the Games has yet to change.

 

 

Yuuri is a tiny thing, not quite large enough to suit his two-digit age. This, combined with the easy way he flushes red and bursts into tears, he gets pushed around a lot more during career training than when he was just seven or eight, picked on until he’s curled up and hyperventilating under the sneers of his classmates. _You’ll be easy pickings in the Games!_ During the sparring sessions, he can barely heave his blunted short sword before he’s thrown onto the floor, breath rushed out in a whoosh, with his opponent’s weapon held victoriously against his neck.

He takes to hiding in the bathrooms during training when he can. Sometimes he’s dragged out, sweat beading his forehead and heart tumbling over itself to bleed the flight out of his body.

Somehow, Minako finds out. It must have been Mari who tells her – Mari, who’s going into the fourth year of Reapings and still stands up to the other ten and eleven-year-olds whenever she sees them messing with her gentle brother. They scatter in her wake, but regroup the moment she steps aside.

Minako teaches Yuuri to dance in lieu of actual training, safely ensconced in her home at the Village. Yuuri takes to that a lot better, letting music guide him from step to step to step until he’s breathing hard and sweat is rolling down his forehead. He’s an avid learner, growing lean and lithe with all the exercise. When Minako tells him he has to run to the Village for his lessons every day he takes up the challenge with determined ease. She adds swimming to the schedule – not plain dips in the ocean with his sister, but long laps back and forth through the waves – and teaches him to throw a knife. She guides his arm again and again until it sticks solidly into the drywall of her battered living room. As the weeks pass, the wall becomes littered with the marks of his success.

For all the time he’s spent at the Village, Yuuri never meets Viktor Nikiforov face to face. In fact, for a victor, Viktor is rarely at his new home. Yuuri notices, because he spends a lot of time at Minako’s, and because his mama is a baker and makes him bring fresh bread to Yakov next door. Yakov likes Yuuri in his own gruff way, tells him stories of the sea that keep him enraptured through the rest of the day and well into the night when he’s meant to be sleeping. He’s tried bringing some of Hiroko’s baked goods for Viktor, but the lights were dark and Minako tells him at practice that Viktor isn’t always home. It doesn't quite deter him, even when Hiroko stops sliding in a package specifically for Four's youngest victor. 

The basket remains full at the end of every day.

Except one: the moment Yuuri places the basket on Viktor's doorstep, something crashes against the door with a wordless, sobbing scream, and Yuuri flees into the relative safety of Minako’s home before Viktor can get him. He’s left the basket of bread on Viktor’s porch like an idiot, too scared to get it right away; Minako ropes him into a lesson as soon as he appears so all he can do is twist his hands anxiously and fail every step she gives him.

“What the hell are you thinking about, kid?” Minako asks, expelling a frustrated breath. Yuuri stares at her wide-eyed but keeps his mouth shut. “It’s not about training, is it?”

“N-no!”

“Then you should be _dancing_ , not _worrying_. Start over, and don’t let me see you drag your feet in the second measure!”

For the rest of the lesson, Yuuri doubles his focus on the intricate footwork until Minako lets him escape to the sea. “Four laps, Yuuri,” she reminds him when he opens the door.

“Yes, sensei.”

The basket still sits on Viktor’s porch, but when Yuuri picks it up, it’s empty.

When he steps out of the village, there’s an itch on his shoulder. He looks back, but the curtains on Viktor’s windows remain tightly closed.

 

 

“Do you ever get scared, Mari?”

“What are you talking about, brat?”

Twelve-year-old Yuuri kicks his feet against the ground, swinging the day’s catch over his shoulder. In the two years since Viktor Nikiforov won his Games, Yuuri has grown, but in degrees. He’s starting to accept that he might never hit a growth spurt, that he’ll be stuck in a child’s body forever. He thinks it might not be so bad; most of his peers have long since shot up, all gangly, graceless limbs that wouldn’t know dance if it bit their feet. If keeping small meant that he’d still be able to dance, then it’s a worthy sacrifice. Besides, Mama and Papa are on the shorter side, and Mari isn’t that much taller than Papa, so he’ll probably never grow up.

He’s grown _muscle_ , though, tightly corded beneath his smooth child’s skin from the hours spent on the dirt road, in Minako’s make-shift studio, throwing any knife he comes across, spearing fish and diving through the sea. In training, he’s able to weather strike after strike with the different weapons they insist on making him use. _It’s good practice, Katsuki, what if they don’t have your preferred weapon at the Cornucopia?_ He’d die, probably, because he can’t bring himself to fight back no matter how many times they heckle him, push him, bruise him.

“I meant,” Yuuri says softly, eyes on the dirt road leading them home, “Before the Reapings. Do you ever get scared?”

It’s hard to imagine his hardened, steel-eyed sister being _scared_ of anything, but the Games are their own brand of fear. Every year, whenever someone is about to die in the Games, Yuuri buries his face in the nearest soft thing he can find – his sister’s arm, his mother’s bosom, his father’s belly, Minako’s pillows. During the more gruesome parts, he blocks out the sound of steel on flesh and screaming with his own uncontrollably panicked breaths until the ringing in his ears take over. At the end of it all, he’s left trembling and near tears, nightmares of losing his loved ones strangling his dreams for weeks and weeks until he suppresses the memories, only for it to start all over again.

This year, it’s much worse. This year, his name will be placed – _once_ , just once, Mari refused to let him take out any tesserae for their family even during the leaner months when nobody in town could afford to buy much bread – in the little bowl for the boys, and he’ll be standing among the little crowd of twelve-year-olds dreading the sound of his own name. This year, the nightmares started before the Games have, but instead of featuring his sister or Minako or his parents, he’s the one scrabbling at his throat and drowning in the pool of his own blood. He’s the one tangled in his own net screaming as the laughing careers prick and needle him with their blades.

Mari’s hand curls around Yuuri’s shoulder gently, drawing him to a stop and out of his own head. Yuuri looks up at her, worrying the inside of his cheek. She smiles, crouching down to his height. “Of course, Yuuri. Everyone gets scared. Even those careers from District One and Two.”

“Really?”

“If they’re not, they’re not really people,” Mari tells him. She squeezes his shoulder. “It’s okay to be scared, but like Asako says, you have nothing to worry about. How many times is your name in the Reaping?”

Yuuri swallows. “Once.”

“And how many times is that little troublemaker’s name, Vladimir?”

Yuuri lowers his eyes when he thinks, chewing his cheek a little harder. One of his previous tormentors had been bragging about the tesserae he’d taken out for his family earlier that week, certain that he would be chosen in his first year and beat out Nikiforov as the youngest victor of the Games. “Five,” he says finally.

“You’re not going to get picked, Yuuri,” Mari whispers. “The odds are in your favor. And I promise, even if you did, that boy will volunteer himself into the Games. You know he will.”

Voice tremulous, Yuuri whispers, “Do you think he’ll win?”

Mari studies his face. “I think he’ll try.”

Yuuri’s haul slips off his shoulder when he throws his arms around his sister, pressing his trembling frame against her much sturdier one.

Four days later, from the crowd at the district’s main square, two names are called.

Asako Ivanova.

Vladimir Kurosawa.

Three weeks later, their faces are projected across Panem, in honor of the dead.

 

 

When he’s fifteen, Yuuri meets Viktor Nikiforov in person for the first time. ‘Meets’ isn’t quite right – ‘runs into and flattens’ is more accurate, because when he body-checks Viktor he’s running full-tilt down the cobbled cliff-side trail, eyes fixed on the ground to make sure he doesn’t trip over anything in front of him. Minako will appreciate that irony, if she ever hears about it.

He scrambles up from where he’s flown a few feet to the right, and rushes over to his unwitting victim, stammering out apologies as his hands flutter uselessly over the fallen form. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Viktor coughs as he sits up, one hand rubbing his ribs with a pained grimace, holding up a hand to forestall Yuuri’s nervous babble. Yuuri hovers, saying helplessly, “Is there anything I can _do_?”

“Not at all, sweetheart, just,” Viktor wheezes, waving away Yuuri’s trembling hands. “Let me catch my breath a minute.”

Yuuri flushes at the nickname, sitting back on his heels and staring worriedly at the victor until he – finally – meets Yuuri’s gaze. His blue eyes are darkly amused. “I should flag you for speeding,” Viktor says teasingly, and his head drops back with a low groan that has Yuuri inching away nervously. His silver hair, tied back in a high ponytail, is long enough that it just barely brushes against the dirt behind him. “How fast were you running, fifty miles? Sixty? Feels like I was hit by a train.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says again, uselessly. “I can… Minako can help, she might have something for the bruises—”

Viktor waves his hand carelessly, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m just teasing you. What’s your name?”

“Ah, um… Yuuri. Yuuri Katsuki.”

“Katsuki? Your parents own the bakery downtown, don’t they?” Viktor offers his hand to help Yuuri up, as though _he_ had just run over the most popular victor in the district. Yuuri flushes and mumbles an assent, getting to his feet on his own. Viktor’s hand falls, and he looks thoughtful.

“I… I wasn’t looking,” Yuuri says, for the lack of anything to say.

“I can see that. Training hard for the Games? Speed could be useful, but I wouldn’t rely on it alone.”

Yuuri’s eyes widen. “What? No!” Viktor frowns at him, and Yuuri scrambles. “I’m. I don’t— I just like running, because I get anxious, and— Not everything has to be about _winning_ the _Games_!” The final declaration is trembling and frightened, and he slaps both hands over his mouth as soon as the words spill out. He stares wide-eyed at the Capitol’s golden boy, certain now that he’s going to get the beating of his lifetime. If Viktor doesn’t decide to just tip him over the edge for insulting Panem’s legacy, that is.

“Hm.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispers through his hands.

Viktor tilts his head at him, silvery strands falling over one eye. “Why?”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, probably not,” Viktor says agreeably.

“You’re… not mad?”

“Why would I be?”

“Because…” Yuuri flounders. “You won the Games.”

“Yes?”

“And… and you’re not _mad_ at me? For saying that not everyone wants to…”

Viktor studies him curiously. “I can be. Do you want me to be?” When Yuuri shakes his head, Viktor says, “I don’t make a habit of getting angry at someone for being afraid of the Games. It’s quite a challenge, and not everyone wants to live through it. Or with it,” he adds, expression turning a little darker, in a voice so soft that Yuuri thinks it might have been a bit of breeze.

“Is it hard?” Yuuri says quietly.

Viktor blinks, raising his gaze again. “Excuse me?”

“Ah, um. Winning. Is it hard? Not… not during. After. Minako, she said… she said,” Yuuri recalls, wrinkling his nose a little, “’They’ll eat you alive’.” It sounds terrible no matter how he says it; he’s still not quite sure what that entails, or what it even means, because of the three victors in Four Viktor is certainly the most spoiled by the Capitol. They love Viktor, crowds upon crowds of people screaming his name whenever he pays them a visit – and he takes lover after lover almost every night he’s there. It’s all covered by the anchors during the news segment at night, their voices going deep and giggly at the gossip.

Viktor is still staring at him when Yuuri looks at him a minute later. His cheeks turn bright red, but something in Viktor’s gaze doesn’t let him drop his own. He wraps his arms around himself, staring and staring until…

Softly, Viktor says, “It’s getting late. Shouldn’t you be on your way, Yuuri Katsuki?”

He doesn’t see Viktor again, not for years.

 

 

The year he turns sixteen, the bakery gets shut down. Yuuri’s father comforts his sobbing mother with his arms around her waist, murmuring, “Hirosha, my Hirosha,” over and over again in her ear. The once-beloved diminutive slides past her meaninglessly, doing nothing to bring the light back to her eyes; Mari and Yuuri watch together, hands linked, expressions pinched and worried, standing amidst the shattered glass in the shadow of the boards that cover up their door.

That year, times are harder than they’ve ever been. Yuuri’s mother never responds to their father’s special affectionate name for her, and Toshiya slowly stops calling her by it. The hard _ko_ of his mother’s name is harsher on his father’s tongue, like a hammer taken to the delicate glass of their marriage. Over time, he stops saying it at all.

Yuuri learns alongside his sister to smile away the pangs of hunger as they pile food on their listless mother’s plate, into their dulled father’s lunch. _I’m not hungry, I already ate at school_ , he learns to say with false cheer, suppressing the pinch of his stomach and ignoring the ever-present tremor of weakness in his hands.

Mari gets another job. It’s not nearly enough to support them, but it helps take a load off their exhausted father’s shoulders. Yuuri learns to cook. The first few times were a disaster of charcoal fish and burnt rice, but over time he starts to get it. Nothing he makes is as good as his mother’s; he thinks he’s missing an important ingredient, no matter how many times he consults his mother’s books. He tries to get a job, too, but Mari tells him to focus on school, to work hard until it’s over. _Until after your last Reaping_ , she doesn’t say, and she doesn’t need to.

During his lessons, Minako drinks, and drinks, and drinks until she’s a mumbling heap on the couch. When that happens, Yuuri pulls a blanket over her shoulders and tiptoes out the door. He tries to leave food for her, too, but more often than not they go uneaten. Minako starts wasting away, and Yuuri dances his worries across her living room, the training floor when no one’s there, across the sand by the ocean.

He tells her he dances, and dances for her, hoping it’ll bring her back. She watches him, saying nothing.

At night, Yuuri is tired enough that he passes out, blessedly, with no dreams, for the first time in years. When he mentions it offhandedly to Mari, she says, “That’s one silver lining.” Yuuri ducks his head, because a part of him will willingly trade the dreamless nights for his mother, his mentor and the bakery.

He thinks Mari might, too.

His sister comes back one night, expression taut and unhappy. Yuuri’s flipping a small fish onto plate from the frying pan when she enters the kitchen and sits, hands trembling and clenched.

“What’s wrong, Masha?” His sister swallows. Yuuri pauses what he’s doing, concern rising. “Mari? Is everything okay?”

Mari takes a slow, deep breath. “I got fired. They… _don’t need my services_ ,” she spits out the phrase, acid in every syllable, “anymore.” Then she starts laughing, hysterical and helpless, and Yuuri drops the pan in his rush to wrap his arms around his sister, fear and worry twisting in his heart.

“Mari, Mari,” he says into her shoulder, voice trembling. “We’ll be okay. Remember? We’ll always be okay if—”

Mari shoves him away angrily. “We’re not going to _be_ okay! We’re not going to _be_! Mom’s practically _gone_ , Dad’s _exhausted_ all the time, and Minako— Minako’s off the rails for _no reason_! It’s just us: I’m failing spectacularly, and you’re not even out of school, Yuuri! There’s _nothing_ we can do. Nothing _I_ can do.” Mari’s voice breaks at the end with a sob, and she crumples into her chair again, head in her arms, while Yuuri watches, helpless and hurting. He’s never seen his sister so out of control, not even when Yuuri crawled into her bed at night and woke up screaming from the nightmares. Not even when her friend was reaped all those years ago, only to die protecting young Vladimir from the other Careers.

“Mari,” he whispers, feeling useless in the face of his sister’s pain. How is it that his sister can bring him out of almost any mess so many times, but he can’t even comfort her _once_? What kind of worthless sibling _is_ he?

“Just… just go to bed, Yuuri,” Mari says, muffled into her arms. Her voice has calmed somewhat under the hitch of her breath. “I’ll be alright. It’ll be okay.”

“It will,” Yuuri says, quietly. He doesn’t know how but he wants to make it okay. He doesn’t sleep that night, determined to dream up a solution for their predicament – doesn’t pay attention in his classes, scribbling names and options furiously on the margins of his notebook. Hides, for the first time in years, in the bathroom during training, staring furiously his chicken scratch until it feels like his eyes might start to bleed.

He almost skips dance with Minako, but the memory of his mentor’s alcohol-soaked expression is guilt enough for him to slink – half an hour late – into the Victor’s Village in his close-fitted dance clothes. He goes through the motions of stretching on Minako’s floor with a furrowed brow, his mentor deep into her bottle, and starts going half-heartedly through a few ballet exercises.

Yuuri is so lost in thought that, when Minako catches his shoulder, he lets out a startled yelp and loses his balance, catching himself on the barre.

“You’re overthinking.” Minako’s voice is clipped and careful, words coming out of an awkwardly formed mouth. She grips his shoulder a little harder. “What… what are _you_ thinking?”

“Sen… sensei?”

She gives him a little shake, and Yuuri straightens up a little. “ _Posture_. You make mistakes when you over-think. What are you thinking about?”

“I’m… just worried, sensei. My family…”

Minako doesn’t seem to hear him, leaning in close to his face. He cringes a little; her breath stinks of cheap alcohol. “There’s… _always_ a solution. _Always_. Always a way out, Yuuri. Never forget. Even when… even when’ere _stuck_. _Always_. A way. Out. Never… never forget, even if you’re… even if you’re Reaped. _Always_ ,” she says again, giving him another little shake.

Yuuri stares at her, mind working. A way out… the Reaping. A way out of poverty, of starvation. The Hunger Games. _Tesserae_.

Of course.

“I have to go,” Yuuri blurts, and throws his arms around Minako. “Thank you,” he whispers, clinging tight to his bleary mentor, who pats his back awkwardly. “I won’t forget.”

When he brings home the tesserae rations a few days later, his sister’s expression is full of ice. Yuuri ignores her biting anger in favor of pulling out his mother’s baking recipes to recreate little remnants of their childhood.

All those extra slips of paper with his name in the bowl are worth it when the house smells of baking bread once more, and his mother stirs out of her stupor to give them her first real smile in months, to help Yuuri in the kitchen. When Toshiya whispers, “ _Hirosha_ ,” into Hiroko’s hair with a muffled, tearful laugh, and she responds with her loving, “ _Tolya._ ” Their fingers entwined, Yuuri’s parents are inseparable for a night, and their love expands once more like a galaxy pushing at the edges of their battered little home.

Despite it all, Yuuri can’t help but be painfully, pathetically grateful when Takeshi Nishigori is reaped over his own nine entries that year.

 

 

He’s seventeen, and something is wrong. Yuuri feels it in his stomach, which roils and cramps like the time he had a piece of bad fish and had to stay home for a week puking his guts into the toilet. It’s like the universe has displaced an important piece, and the effort of existence weighs heavily on his fast-pounding heart.

His sister knows it, too, from the way she’s watching Yuuri tear the seaweed bun into tiny little pieces. She wordlessly puts hers on his plate when his is nothing but crumbs, and he shreds that too, fingers trembling over the soft dough.

Hiroko nudges his plate gently. “Eat, Yuu-chan,” she says softly. “You’re too skinny.”

“Mama,” Yuuri mumbles in embarrassment, but takes a bite out of the bun anyway, chewing slowly. He keeps his gaze on the table, trying not to think about how many entries he has this year (fourteen).

When he’s gotten through enough of the bread to satisfy his family, he’s sent off to the bathroom to clean his teeth and straighten his hair. Hiroko fusses with the collar of his best shirt, a simple white cotton blouse that once belonged to Mari. Any other time he’d be embarrassed because he’s wearing his _sister’s_ castoffs, but right then he can barely keep his breakfast down, let alone worry about his clothes.

“Keep your head up,” Mari whispers in his ear at the square, before they have to part. Their parents stand off to the side, watching him. Yuuri takes a deep breath, chin jerking to the sky in acknowledgement, fighting to embody the pride his sister possessed on these days, when it was her name thirty, thirty-five times in the glass bowl. What’s fourteen in comparison? Just two years of tessera on top of the six that came with age. Mari nudges him towards the lines. “Come find us by the stands when it’s over. We’ll have mama’s special tonight. After this, it’s just one more year, kiddo.”

“I know,” Yuuri says, voice wavering. He swallows hard. “See you soon.”

“See you soon,” Mari echoes, and then she’s gone and Yuuri is at the front of the line, a Peacekeeper stifling a yawn into his hand.

“Name,” he grunts out, not even bothering to look at him.

“Yuuri Katsuki. Two u’s.” With a prick of blood to confirm his identity, he’s waved down the line to the seventeen-year-olds. In the crowd of children, someone has started to cry, a sharp wail that rises over the clamor.

 _“I w-want to g-go_ home _!”_

Yuuri takes his place by his peers and gazes up at the stage. Minako is mentoring this year, he knows, because she was last year too. She’s not as much of a wreck this time as she was the last, which he _knows_ is good – any student under a focused Minako has a fighting chance. She’s whip-smart and perfectly capable, even if she lost her tribute last year.

By her side is, as always, Viktor Nikiforov. Despite his lack of success in bringing home a tribute alive for seven Games, he’s been a constant in the Games since his win – so heavily demanded that Yuuri thinks it’ll be a long while before he’s ever replaced. The man has cut his hair since Yuuri ran him over, but his bangs fall over one eye to give him what gossip anchor Domitia Vaillant calls a cheeky, flirtatious look. His expression today is anything but.

Viktor’s gaze travels over the crowd, and seems to settle in his direction. Yuuri fights the urge to look over his shoulder, instead ducking his head and fiddling with the sleeves of the blouse. When he peeks up again, Viktor’s still looking.

Minako, on the other hand, is determinedly not looking at him. Yuuri fidgets until their overdressed escort takes the stage, giggling when Viktor flashes him a smile. Andel Rivera steps before the microphone, tapping it with one claw-like fingernail before clearing his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys,” he sings. “Welcome, welcome, to the seventieth Hunger Games!”

There’s no applause for Andel Rivera’s speech, just a sense of weary surrender and tired acceptance. _Get it over with_ , Yuuri urges mentally, trying not to fidget again. He glances around, and Mari is staring at him from her place beyond the barrier. She shakes her head minutely, a warning. _Don’t draw attention_. Not that it changes anything, with the glass bowls already overflowing with printed slips, but Yuuri stills and forces himself to look up at the video projected across the wall of the Justice Building. The images flicker and flash: fire and death and the Capitol’s triumph.

It ends to the same silence that greeted the district’s escort. The boy standing next to Yuuri yawns widely, seeming to be half asleep. Yuuri crinkles his brow at him in bewilderment as the boy sways on his feet.

“Ladies first, as always!” With a click of his heels, Andel skips over to the bowl on his right. He winks at his unwilling crowd before plucking a slip out with a flourish. The paper crinkles into the microphone, and, _“_ Yuuko Azuma!”

Yuuri blinks, turning with the crowd to stare at the brown-haired girl. Her face is pale, lips pressed together, but she straightens up and stalks towards the stage with the elegance of a princess. When she turns around, there’s a fire in her eyes. A chill runs down his spine.

“Well done, well done!” Andel enthuses, like the girl had just won the world. “Yuuko, well _done_. Now, for the boys!”

Yuuri’s curls his hands into tight fists, fingernails digging into his palm. _Not me. Not me, not me_. His chest tightens against the racing of his heart.

“Oh, like _twins_ , how _wonderful_! Ladies and gentlemen, your male tribute this year is _Yuuri Katsuki_!”

 

In the Katsuki household, long before the name _Viktor Nikiforov_ ever passed the lips of their then-escort Vesuvius Granley, one easy way for the Katsuki children to know that they were in deep trouble was if their parents used their whole name. Not _Yuu-chan_ or _Yuuri_ , but a full-on bellow of _Yuuri Katsuki!_ that both siblings _knew_ their neighbors a few streets over could hear. It became something of a game to them, to see if they could hear Mama or Papa from an ever-increasing distance.

“I was in Asako’s house one day,” a young Mari whispered to her brother, stifling giggles, “And you were in trouble, and _I swear_ I heard Papa yelling your name.”

“Wow! Really?”

Mari nodded, self-important, and Yuuri giggled brightly at the idea, rolling on the floor to kick his feet. “I heard,” Yuuri announced from his prone position on the floor, “Mama yelling _yours_ near the bakery!”

“That’s ‘cause we were _in_ the bakery, Yuu-chan!” Mari reached down from her perch on the chair and tickled her little brother’s stomach, causing him to squeal in delight. “That’s cheating!”

Even with the trouble they caused as children, his name has always been something for him to be proud of. “It’s _your_ identity,” Mari said once, when they laid side-by-side on the beach, gazing up at the clouds. “It’s _you_. Don’t ever wish you were someone else, because you’re the best Yuuri Katsuki that’s ever lived.” During the times that Yuuri struggled to express himself, had to hide away from the crowds, when he had nightmares or saw _nothing_ in the mirror, he let those words soothe the edges of his anxiety and settle the roiling worry in his heart.

Yuuri Katsuki knew himself.

But when it’s called that day in the district square, when the lilting Capitol accent butchers the elongated _u_ and places emphasis on the wrong syllable in his family name, Yuuri finds that he doesn’t actually. He doesn’t know himself at all, not if he’s this boy called to the national stage, sentenced to die.

Never has his name sounded so foreign to his ears.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Yuuri Katsuki, there are very few things in the world that you can’t do, and I’m going to tell you one of them. You can’t say that."_
> 
> Goodbyes are said. Plans are made.

There’s enough air around him to breathe, but Yuuri finds that he can’t, not really. He never thought he’ll see the day that he’s more comfortable in a crowd of strangers, but he wishes, desperately, that they’d converge and hide him from view. They don’t. Their eyes watch, each of them breathing statues just waiting for him to make his move.

The stage grows, and the paper in Andel’s hand unfurls a sentencing that all but Yuuri can hear – their unwavering eyes look, and look, and look. Yuuri wants to turn around, to find his parents and Mari in the crowd and scream, “ _Don’t make me go, I want to go home!_ ” But if he does, he’ll start to cry, or throw up, or both at once. Even now, his family’s eyes – fixed on the single point above his ear – burn with the weight of the tears about to be shed.

His first step almost turns him around.

The effort it takes not to is colossal.

“Yuuri Katsuki, join us on stage!” Andel says cheerfully. The colorful man is beaming down at him, like this is the best day of his life. Maybe it was. “Come now, don’t be shy!”

_Shy?_

Shyness had nothing to do with the terror of making that walk down the impromptu aisle, a marriage he never agreed to. Shyness had nothing to do with the reluctance to take the stage and watch the flimsy foundation beneath his family crumble back to dust. Shyness had nothing to do with preparing to die.

Someone nudges his back. Yuuri starts, and it’s like the world picks up speed again, like bursting out of the depths of the ocean for a breath of air to his sister’s laughter from the sands. He starts to turn, but the hand clasps his wrist.

“You should go, Yuuri,” says the boy behind him. His voice is barely a whisper, but Yuuri hears the beat of the words echoing from his chest. “Before they come and make you.” The hand tightens, and Yuuri understands. The last time a tribute refused to move from her spot, she’d been dragged onto the stage, fighting and clawing every second of the way.

He should go, Yuuri. He should go while he still has his dignity.

His first real step is barely one at all – just a press of dirt beneath his shoe, like trying to weigh more on wet sand. The next sends him stumbling forwards, his body too numb to hold him up. The third is Minako’s inebriated sway, and the fourth, the fifth, the seventh through the twentieth put him closer to the end and as far, far away as he feels from home.

A hand clasps his, tugs him up the stairs. Yuuko Azuma looks at him kindly. She has lovely eyes, luminous and warm.

“We’ll be okay,” she whispers, barely a puff of air under Andel Rivera’s enthusiasm at their supposed sportsmanship. Yuuri grips her hand, feeling the tremble that reverberates up their arms. Yuuko smiles. She releases him as soon as Andel returns, his smile like a flash of pearly knives.

“Congratulations, oh how wonderful… Both of you have such similar names, how lovely, this is _wonderful_ , it’s like you’re twins. Turn around, my dear, face the crowd, come on now… Do we have any volunteers? No?”

Yuuri folds his hands behind his back to hide the way they’re shaking, gazing out over the crowd in tremulous silence. _You’re not going to get picked. The odds are in your favor._ That was six years ago. Six years. Vladimir Kurosawa is long dead, incapable of saying the words to save Yuuri’s life. Nobody steps up in place of the boy who will be easy pickings in the Games. In the seven years that District Four has failed to secure another victor, nobody wants to die in his place.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuko Azuma clasps her hands by her heart, head bowed as though in prayer. No one volunteers for her, either.

“Congratulations, Yuuri Katsuki and Yuuko Azuma! Your tributes from District Four, everyone!”

 

 

 

The air in the Justice Building is frigid, freezing his breath as easy as a hard dunking into the wintry. In the silence of his holding room, Yuuri wraps his arms around himself and pulls his knees up to his chin. His parents have come and gone, their uncontrollable sobs chipping away at whatever emotional control he managed to pull together on that stage; he _does_ cry in their arms, body shaking with the force of half-voiced screams he couldn’t contain as their hands clutch at him like this is the last time he’ll ever see them.

And it _will_ be. Yuuri is never going to see his parents again, even if he knows their anxious, worried gazes will long stay on him to the very end. He wishes, privately, desperately, helplessly, that his last memory of Hiroko and Toshiya Katsuki will not be of the door slamming shut between them.

Now, Yuuri stares at the door, waiting, and waiting, and—

The knob turns, and Mari falls in in her haste. Her breaths are ragged, and in the stumble she makes for him Yuuri thinks, _Oh, she’s crying_. Her arms are around him in an instant, fingers clawed and digging into the little flesh he has remaining. “Yuuri, Yuura, Yuu-chan, _Yuu-chan_ —”

“I’m alright, Masha,” Yuuri says, but he’s crying again, too, all semblance of scrappy poise disintegrating at the sight of his hardened sister’s grief. Silently, they sit together. His tears catch on the shoulder of her shirt, and this _last time_ ticks down as surely as his life, but they rock together silently, back and forth, and back and forth. Mari’s hand strokes over his hair the way mama did for him as a child. Yuuri breathes raggedly into shirt, trying to hide just how hard he’s shaking.

“You have to win,” Mari whispers, voice rough after the comforting silence. When Yuuri tenses, she holds him tighter. “You _can_ , Yuura. You’re just… just as good as the rest of them. And Minako, you know she’ll bring you home. You know it. You just have to believe in her. Believe in _yourself_.”

Yuuri curls his fingers into her sleeves, taking shallow breaths. “What if I can’t?”

Mari jerks away from him at that, her hands like vices on his shoulders and the determination of her youth in every line of her face. Yuuri ducks his head against the fire of her expression, subtly twisting his way out of her bruising grip. “Yuuri Katsuki, there are very few things in the world that you can’t do, and I’m going to tell you one of them. You _can’t_ _say_ _that_ ,” she hisses. “You can win. _I know you can win_. I believe that. _You_ have to believe that.”

“But Mari, I’m not… I’m not strong. I’ve never won anything against anyone here.”

“That’s because you don’t fucking fight back!” She must see the moment it hurts, because her arms are around him a moment later, squeezing tightly. “Yuuri, no, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant—”

“It’s okay,” Yuuri whispers, even if it isn’t, because this is the last time he’s going to see her. “I know.”

“You _have_ to win, Yuuri. I know you can. You’re smarter, faster, and you’ve trained so hard—”

Yuuri clutches his sister tighter, voice trembling. “Not for this. Never for this.”

Mari rubs his back, soothing. “I _know_ you can,” she whispers. “You just need to know it, too. You’re Yuuri Toshiyavich Katsuki. You’re the best you that’s ever lived.” Yuuri’s fingers curl into the cotton of her shirt, like confidence is passed through proximity or osmosis – and for a suspended moment in time, it works.

They sit together in relative peace until the knock from the Peacekeepers shatters the silence, and Yuuri is suddenly – desperately – aware of the gaping hole in his torso where his stomach should have been. “Masha,” he says, weakly.

She clutches his face in her hands, fire in her eyes like Yuuko Azuma on that stage. “Don’t give up. Promise me.”

“Mari, I—”

“ _Promise me_.” A peacekeeper has stepped inside, and is pulling on his sister roughly. She stumbles back, eyes fixed on her little brother. “ _Promise_ me, Yuura!”

“Masha!” Yuuri’s body jerks out of its seat after her. She reaches out, and his fingers brush hers. “I promise. _I promise_!” But it’s too late, and she’s gone, and he doesn’t know if she can hear him through the door. He presses his forehead against the wood, taking a slow, shuddering breath, the flat of his palm pressed into the grain, wishing he were someone else – anyone else.

A tremulous laugh escapes – more of a gasp, shaking with the rest of him. Yuuri Toshiyavich Katsuki is the best of his name that’s ever lived – until he’s dead.

He’s still standing there, fighting back the tears in his eyes, when the door opens again. Yuuri jerks backwards, and the Peacekeeper looks at him blandly. “Get going,” she says, hefting her weapon and jerking her chin down the corridor. “It’s time.”

Yuuri staggers out, like he’s swimming through the ocean on a stormy day. The Peacekeepers flank him, marching in tandem, a steady beat that brings rhythm back into his motions by the time he sees the gleam of light leading into the train station. A small crowd has gathered by the sidelines, and Yuuko Azuma joins him as he steps through the door, head held high.

Not for the first time, he wishes he has that fire.

“Hurry up, kid,” the female Peacekeeper says, sounding annoyed, and Yuuri picks up the pace. On the step leading into the train, he looks around one last time, fingers clutching at the door.

_Sayonara._

He ducks into the train, leaving his heart in the dirt of District Four.

 

 

 

Everything about his sleeping quarters is _wrong_ , from the silk sheets to the stink of chemicals on his pillow, but Yuuri can’t make himself take the two steps to his door, and the twelve that will lead him into the lounge in the next carriage. A part of him wants to commiserate and get to know the people who could well preserve his life, but the other part – the louder, more insistently anxious part – locks his muscles and holds him in fetal position upon the too-soft bed. Commiseration can wait.

Except it can’t, because someone’s knocking on his door and sliding it open. Yuuri tenses, burying his tear-stained face into the pillow.

“There you are,” says Viktor Nikiforov. “We were looking for you. It’s lunchtime, aren’t you hungry? Minako said you might be in here. Is everything alright?”

Yuuri curls his fingers tighter into the sheets, and he hears a soft sigh. The bed dips behind him.

“Are you feeling sick?” There’s a cool hand on his forehead, and it combs through his tangled hair gently in a gesture so reminiscent of his mother that Yuuri finds himself starting to sob again. “Oh dear.”

Viktor sounds so distressed that a short burst of laughter intermixes with his tears, and Yuuri rolls over. Viktor’s face looks strange through a veil of tears, but there’s still a certain shine to him that’s unmistakable. He swipes the tears from his eyes with a sleeve, and, breathing shakily, pushes himself upright. Viktor pats his shoulder awkwardly, looking quite on the verge of bolting.

It’s only when the tears stop flowing that Yuuri shifts away from him, snagging a tissue from the box and blowing his nose.

“I’m sorry, I don’t really know what to do with tears,” Viktor says, sounding slightly bewildered.

Yuuri huffs a laugh, sniffling. “It’s okay.” He offers a watery smile that Viktor – looking relieved that the worst was over – returns.

“You should join us in the dining carriage and meet Yuuko properly. It might do you some good to get away from yourself,” Viktor offers, rising to his feet. He looks Yuuri over swiftly, voice dropping with a sultry smile Yuuri remembers from those late night programs. “But freshen up in the bathroom first – tears don’t look right on a boy as pretty as you.”

Yuuri doesn’t _intend_ to leave, but the salacious look on Viktor’s face has him flushing a brilliant shade of red. He stammers out _something_ before bolting past Viktor for the door, hearing the mentor’s laugh ringing out behind him. Slamming the bathroom door shut, Yuuri presses his forehead against the mirror, still caught in the limbo between – whatever _that_ was, with Viktor – and utter misery. With a thready whine, he lets himself slump down to his knees.

Footsteps come and fade – Viktor must have decided to return to the dining carriage – before he can gather himself enough to wash the tears from his face and the embarrassment from his skin. It takes him another five minutes to make his way into the dining carriage, where Yuuko, Minako and Viktor are seated around a sturdy table.

Taking a deep breath, Yuuri takes his seat beside Yuuko and ducks his head, murmuring an apology for being late.

“It’s not a problem,” Viktor says airily, flicking his fingers in a dismissive gesture. “We were just getting started. The program will start soon. Jam in your tea?”

“Yes please,” Yuuri says quietly, accepting the mug when it’s offered. It’s been a few years since he’s last had jam in his tea, what with the decline of the bakery, but it tastes as good as he remembers it.

“Go get yourself something to eat,” Minako says. He glances at her, and her lips are pursed in a way that meant no good. Casting a nervous look around the carriage decked to the brim with different treats and meals, Yuuri starts to get up when Yuuko catches his attention.

“You should try one of these,” Yuuko says quietly, pointing to her dish. She’s got a bowl of breaded meat and egg over rice. “It’s really good.”

“What is it?”

“I think the label said _katsudon_. Don’t know what that means, but it tastes good.”

Yuuri takes her suggestion gratefully, offering her a tiny smile when he returns to his seat with the bowl of food. The first bite is a spill of flavor and heat over his mouth, the sharp bite of salt soothed by the fluffy neutrality of the egg and rice; but the _second_ is like angels heralding praises on his tongue. Yuuri can’t help the way he moans around the mouthful, too ecstatic to feel embarrassment.

Viktor laughs at him. Yuuko teases gently, “Chew your food, it’ll taste better,” and Minako rolls her eyes when Yuuri just stuffs as much of it into his mouth as he can.

When he’s halfway through the bowl, his natural shyness catches up to him, and Yuuri flushes bright red, ducking his head. Viktor lets out another delighted sound. “Oh, you’re _cute_!” He turns to Minako and says in a tone more suited to a petulant child than a victor of the Games, “I want him.”

Yuuko laughs. Minako looks at him with an unreadable expression that Viktor returns with a grin, and then she shrugs with a swift glance at Yuuri. She says, “Sure.”

Yuuri chokes on a swallow of tea, coughing. “ _What_?” He stares at Minako as though she’s helping the Capitol rip apart his chest, and she gives him a hard and angry look, complete with a warning shake of her head. Before either of them can continue, they’re interrupted by Viktor clapping his hands delightedly – an image completely at odds with the sex god advertised throughout the Capitol – with his actions punctuated by the sudden blare of the Capitol anthem on the television.

“Wonderful! Yuuri, from now on, I am your mentor!”

“Which leaves you with me,” Minako tells Yuuko, calmly. Yuuko’s expression grows serious, and she nods before turning to the wide screen mounted against the far wall, where Caesar Flickerman and Jean-Jacques Leroy were seated at the table, in front of a screen displaying a slowly spinning Capitol symbol.

“What’s he doing there?” Yuuko says curiously, pointing at Leroy. “Isn’t he a victor?”

Viktor sighs, cheek in his palm. “Yes, but JJ likes the attention he gets for being a reality television star.” He sounds vaguely amused, like the antics of a fellow victor is anything close to laughable. Minako shushes them.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of Panem!” Caesar says, with an open-mouthed grin. “Good afternoon, indeed! I’m joined here for the first time by our very own victor from the 68th Hunger Games, the a- _maaaay_ -zing Jean-Jacques Leroy! JJ, how _excited_ are you to meet our twenty-four tributes?”

“I can barely sit still, Caesar,” JJ says with a wide grin. “But I think I’m more excited for what’s to come – if what I’ve heard from District One’s mentor, our very own Christophe Giacometti, is right, then this Games will be full of ‘ _JJ-Style’_!”

Yuuri chews his next bite of katsudon silently, seeking a distraction from the too-bright screen as JJ Leroy flashes his trademark sign, fingers curved into two crudely-formed J’s for his nickname. Looking over at Minako, Yuuri swallows the food and asks, “Where’s our escort?”

Minako blinks, then looks over at Viktor, who props his chin in his hand with an expression that would be serious if not for a practiced smirk on his lips. “Sleeping. He’s quite – ah – tired out, shall I say.”

“Really?” Minako hisses at him, and Viktor shrugs.

“I wanted to meet these two without any pressure from him. He’s got quite a few ideas to lock down sponsorships, but none of us are quite ready to hear them, I think. Now shh, I’m watching.” He holds a finger to his lips for emphasis, returning his gaze to the screen.

Minako mutters something under her breath, falling silent when the program changes from the two anchors to coverage from each Reaping.

Yuuri nervously peers up at the District One tributes as their names are called: Isabella Yang and Otabek Altin. Isabella looks serene, her hands clasped in front of her dress, but Otabek… He’s not particularly _large,_ but there’s a certain _way_ about him and the way he holds himself that reeks of danger. Yuuri swallows nervously at the dismissive look he gives his escort, at the sheer solidity of the other boy. “How old is he?”

“Sixteen,” Yuuko murmurs, scanning the text at the bottom of the screen displaying the tributes’ information. “He looks… very prepared.”

“Looks aren’t everything,” Viktor says dismissively. “We’ll keep an eye on him, but for now think of him as any other tribute.” Yuuri flicks Viktor a glance, biting back a sharp comment: _Any other tribute with career training and an inclination to kill, right?_

Minako clears her throat as onscreen Cassiopeia Delaney and William Neklann are reaped in District Two. “What Viktor means is that you should focus not on what they look like but who they are inside. The irony,” she adds under her breath while the tiny, trembling William Neklann is replaced by a grinning, confident Emil Nekola.

“Hey,” Viktor protests. Minako mockingly presses a finger to her lips and shushes him.

“I’m watching.”

Yuuko sucks in a breath when the name _Guang-Hong Ji_ is called in District Three, and a stiff-legged, light-haired child hobbles to the stage. “Oh no,” she says softly, and, when Yuuri looks over curiously, he’s startled to see her eyes well up in tears. “Someone will volunteer for him, right? Like with William?”

“We’ll see,” Minako says, her eyes narrowed on the screen as well.

Uncertain what to do, Yuuri rests a hand on her arm. She puts her own on his, but doesn’t tear her gaze away from the tiny, defeated form on the stage until the scene becomes more familiar.

Yuuri shifts a little, ignoring the commentary as his eyes seek out familiar faces in the crowds. He imagines he can see them watching, pictures their tightly held hands as they wait for the two names to be called, looks for the prayer for emotional relief written across their faces. Then, too late, Yuuri realizes that he doesn’t want to see any part of them when they hear his name – _Yuuri Katsuki_ – spilling out across the air. Doesn’t want to see their faces fall apart, their hands grow limp, their eyes fill with panic as the youngest of them walks amongst them one last time – a funeral march of his own.

Yuuri drops his gaze to the table, eyes burning, and Yuuko squeezes his arm this time.

“Are you okay?” she whispers, and Yuuri gives one sharp nod in response. He swipes at his eyes roughly, taking slow and shaky breaths until the turmoil in his head and heart have calmed. When he looks up, Minako is looking at him steadily, expression calm. _Hold yourself together, Yuuri. There’s always a way out_. _Never forget._

He takes heart in her confidence.

On the screen, Sara Crispino and Yuri Plisetsky take the stage in District 6. Viktor muses, “Interesting.”

“Michele Crispino’s sister?” Minako says, her eyes shifting from Yuuri to the screen, where the cameras have caught the wide-eyed expression of the 69th Games winner.

Michele looks on-screen like he could break something if it was handed to him, Caesar notes, adding, “Unfortunately for them! I wouldn’t be giving him anything of _mine_ soon.” When the shot switches to Sara Crispino gazing back peacefully at her brother, Caesar says, “Oh, that’s very sweet. She’ll be one to watch, won’t she? Look at how level-headed she is.”

“I don’t know, Caesar,” JJ says thoughtfully. “Some of the craziest have won in the past few years. Cao Bin, for instance, and Viktor Nikiforov. Whoever sponsored him that trident must be reaping those benefits. Viktor really went all _out_ with his kills; he had a flair for the dramatic that I’m not ashamed to admit rivals the JJ Style – but, Caesar, you know what really is a shame? For all his theatrics, his tributes never seem to achieve the top 8.”

Glass shatters in Viktor’s hand, drawing a startled yelp from Yuuko. All eyes in the room go to Viktor, who looks bemusedly down at his bleeding hand, and says, “Ah. Apologies. I… misjudged my grip.”

“Go clean up,” Minako says. Viktor waves his good hand dismissively at both her and the Avox that creeps out of the shadows to clean up his mess. Turning his hand over, Viktor seems fascinated by the way the blood is sluggishly spilling out of his palm, watching the red lines slither down his wrist.  

“I’ll fix it later. It’s not like they’ll let me keep the scars.”

_Soo-Min Park_ and _Seung-Gil Lee_ become tributes of District 8, and the tension in the air dissipates when Yuuko lets out another distressed cry: _Phichit Chulanont_ is reaped alongside a much older _Ketty Abelashvili_ in District 9, his big brown eyes gazing just past the camera lens.

“Ah, thirteen! I think he’s our youngest so far, isn’t that right, Caesar? I remember when I was thirteen…”

“You know what, I think you’re right, JJ.” Caesar laughs. “Thirteen! What a shocker. They’re moving into volunteers… _ah_. Our youngest tribute doesn’t look scared, though, does he?”

JJ hums. “I’d say he’s determined, but it’s a little hard to tell from here.”

“He’s _thirteen_ ,” Yuuko says miserably, then, “Oh, sorry Yuuri.”

“It’s fine,” Yuuri says, wincing as he peels her fingers from their death grip around his arm. District Ten draws _Bret Callaghan_ and _Edward Steele_.

“You’re getting blood on your food,” Minako informs Viktor, eyeing his still-bleeding hand with a sick kind of fascination.

Shrugging, Viktor says with a shit-eating grin, “Aw, Minako, it’s like you care.”

“I can wrap it,” Yuuri offers quietly, holding his hands out for Viktor’s, before Minako can give him a new injury. He hears the name _Leo de la Iglesia_ from the screen, and glances over to see the straight-backed boy march his way onto District Eleven’s stage before looking back at his mentors. Minako is rubbing her temples slowly in a way that meant she was on her final nerve, but Viktor just looks bemused as he rests his hand in Yuuri’s. His heavy gaze draws a flush to Yuuri’s cheeks. “Ah, not while you’re staring.”

“Sorry,” Viktor says, not sounding very sorry at all. When he turns his face away, Yuuri snags the cloth napkins sitting off to the side and accepts a bottle of something alcoholic from Minako before setting to work wrapping up Viktor’s hand. He can feel Viktor watching, but every time he glances up the mentor is looking nowhere near him.

“Amazing,” Viktor says, vaguely, with an air of quiet curiosity. “So, what do you think about your competition so far?”

“ _I’m_ probably going to die,” Yuuri mutters under his breath. Someone steps on his toes, and Viktor says, “Ow.”

“Sorry.” Yuuri glares at Minako.

“You’re not going to die, Yuuri,” Minako says, snippily. “That’s what we’re here to prevent. I already know what you can do,” her eyes switch over to Yuuko, “But why don’t you tell me what you’ve got?”

Yuuko hesitates. “I’m an archer, mainly, but I can handle myself with a spear and maybe a sword.” She glances over at Yuuri, raising an eyebrow.

Nervously, Yuuri clears his throat, eyes fixed on the cloth he’s wrapping slowly around Viktor’s hand. “Throwing knives, I guess,” he says quietly. “I don’t really do anything else. I can run?” At his words, Viktor snorts, probably recalling how they met, and Yuuri ducks his head shyly. He ties the makeshift bandage off with a simple knot and releases Viktor to look at Minako.

Nodding slowly, she says, “That’s all good information, but we need to know what _you_ have that other tributes won’t. What will give you an edge that we can use? Something in your past? I already know enough about Yuuri, but I know next to nothing about you.”

In the ensuing silence, Minako frowns and Yuuri chances a look at his district partner. Her entire face has closed off, expression as smooth as carved stone with a tiny, false smile on her lips.

Viktor shifts, jostling broken glass.

“Yuuko?” Yuuri says, hesitantly. Her gaze moves to him, and he’s chilled by its cold stare; he averts his gaze, finding himself staring wide-eyed at Viktor. The older man is frowning, too, both eyes on Yuuko, but he looks back at Yuuri after a moment.

At last, softly, Yuuko says, “That’s not important now, is it? What I fight for. At least when I die, I can say I had the dignity to be me. That’s all I ask for.” Her mouth curves up, lopsided and strangely sweet for an expression so sad. “I don’t ask to live, but I know a few people who could.”

 

 

Later, sitting on the corner of Minako’s bed in the relative privacy of her room, Yuuri dares to ask the question weighing on his mind.

“Why can’t you be my mentor?” He tightens his arms around his knees, eyes fixed on his toes in the soft duvet. “Like you said, you already know what I can do. Do you… do you not believe in me?”

The words drop off the tip of his tongue like stones hitting still water, and Yuuri has to swallow the wave of tears that follow. Minako has been his mentor, his teacher, his _sensei_ for longer than Yuuri can remember; to have her on his team, he knows, would give him a much higher chance of survival just for the peace she can impress on his heart. Imagining an arena – gray with vaguely deadly shapes, and a dozen different tributes coming at him with blank faces – imagining all of that without her is a manacle that locks around his throat and cuts off his breath.

He shudders when Minako rests a hand on his hair, and leans into the touch miserably.

“It’s never that, Yuu-chan,” Minako says, sounding weary. Her hand a steadying force, she watches him for a moment to make sure he’s okay before returning her attention to a clear screen that changes with every press of her finger. “I’ll still _be_ your mentor. Viktor and I are a team, but having him coach you personally… it’s for the better. He can make the Capitol like you in ways that I could never dream of – he’s got the charm, the looks and the position to get you anything you’ll need in there. He can teach you to be just as charming as he is, if you wanted.” Minako takes a deep breath, and continues, “And I don’t trust myself enough to bring you home, not in one piece and not alive. Viktor doesn’t have your family’s history hanging over him. I need to have a clear head, but I won’t – not with you.”

“So you trust him?”

“Don’t let JJ Leroy poison your image of Viktor Nikiforov. That _blyat_ is unstoppable when he puts his mind to it. You just need to give him a reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“He likes you already,” Minako says. “If you’re his friend, if the both of you become close… Viktor is easily attached.” The words are brutal in their honestly, calm and without any inflection. Minako’s eyes are steel. “If you’re his friend, he’ll move heaven and earth to get you out of there.”

“I thought you wanted him because he’s impartial,” says Yuuri.

“Yes.” Unwavering, Minako raises her chin. “But only for your family. With you, he needs to love you beyond all measure. He needs to need you.”

“Sensei, I… you want me to… to…” Yuuri chokes on the words, and Minako’s eyes widen.

“No! No,” Minako says hastily. “No, I mean, seduction would be one way, but Yuuri, you have to think about who he is and what he does for a living. He’s used to that sort of thing – it’s not going to be what he wants. You can’t just be another game to him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He needs a push in the right direction, and you can do that. Just be his friend. Or, or. If you have to, then make him fall in love with you. That shouldn’t be hard – you’re quite attractive on your own, and you can be endearing some days.”

“ _Minako_.” Yuuri’s voice sounds strangled to his ears, a myriad of sentences trying to spill out all at once: “You want me to… I’ve never… I won’t… _I don’t even…_ ”

He half-expects Minako’s visage to crack, for her to start laughing and reach over to tweak his nose teasingly the way she used to when he was a child and thought gullible was written on the ceiling. But Minako’s face is as serious as the ocean on a stormy day, her eyes tired and sad. She pats Yuuri’s cheek. Very gently, she says, “In this game, we play any part we have to in order to survive. Even if we don’t like it. Even if we don’t know how.” When Yuuri lowers his gaze, Minako’s grip tightens minutely. “Yuuri, I promised your family I would see you through alive. I can do my best to set you up for victory, but there are some things you’re going to have to do on your own.”

“I’ve never even kissed someone,” Yuuri admits, fear loosening his lips. “How am I supposed to make Viktor Nikiforov fall in love with me?”

Minako smiles. “I saw the way he was looking at you over dinner, Yuu-chan. Are you sure you haven’t met him before? He seems very interested.”

A memory of curious blue eyes, the ocean breeze in his hair and the weight of embarrassment in his stomach flashes through his mind, but Yuuri shakes his head. “Not long enough for anything like that.”

“So you _have_ met him?” Minako’s eyes narrow slightly.

His face heating up, Yuuri pulls away and scrambles to his feet. “Um, no, I have to go good night,” he blurts, and darts for the door so fast that the sliding door slams shut behind him. He scrubs a hand over his face, listening to Minako’s amused chortle through the walls, then hurries back to his own room where he can bury his face in his pillow and preferably suffocate himself trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Minako wants _Yuuri_ to seduce Viktor Nikiforov, the man he’d practically flattened on their first meeting and who would be the reason he returns home – if he does.

The ethics of that are something he doesn’t want to think about just yet.

He groans, the sound muffled by a pile of feathers. Yuuri’s got as much experience in seduction as a baby turtle, and possibly even less. Viktor, on the other hand, belonged to the Capitol – body and all. His lovers were a hot topic on Domitia Vaillant’s nightly show; Yuuri has only ever kissed dirt when his opponents threw him in it. “I can’t do it,” he tells the pillow. “I have to tell her I can’t do it.”

Beside him, Viktor says lightly, “Is this a bad time?”

Yuuri shoots upright on the bed, gaping when he lays eyes on his mentor. Viktor’s dressed down for the night, but he still looks infinitely more put together than Yuuri. Self-consciously, he runs a hand through his tousled hair and tries to straighten his rumpled shirt. “Um, n-no.”

“Mind if I take a seat?”

Nodding, Yuuri shuffles back to the far edge of the bed and wraps his arms around himself. Viktor sprawls lazily across his bed, a curve on his lips. They stay that way, each party gauging the other – one warily, the other with a growing sense of amusement – for what feels like hours. Even two years later, Viktor’s gaze catches and _holds_ Yuuri’s, never letting him drop his eyes or turn away even as the prickle of heat on his face urges him to _stop, don’t, embarrassment_. Viktor’s look is a quiet command to _keep your eyes on me_ that Yuuri is helpless but to follow.

“So,” Viktor drawls eventually. Yuuri thinks he might have let out an embarrassing noise. “Y _uu_ ri _Kat_ suki.” He drags out the _u_ in a way that only a native to Four can, placing the emphases exactly right on his name – like a vindication, a renewal after being told by Andel Rivera that he’s someone he’s really not. “What do you want me to be?”

“What?” The question startles the response out from his closed-up throat, and Viktor smiles patiently.

“What would you like me to be to you?” Viktor clarifies, something almost predatory in his gaze. “A boyfriend?”

_“What_?” Had Viktor been listening in on their conversation? Yuuri scrambles to respond, but Viktor goes on airily, like he hasn’t just broken Yuuri’s brain in half with a single word.

“No? How about a friend? A brother? A confidante?” A pause. “A lover?”

“ _No_!” His head thumps against the wall in his panic, but he holds his hands out in front of him like a sign to ward off the crazy victor sitting not two feet from him. He blurts, voice high with panic, “What are you _talking_ about? You’re my mentor! We can’t… That’s not…”

Viktor hums, pressing a finger to his lips thoughtfully. “Mm. I’m not known to follow the rules.”

“You’re supposed to help me get through the Games,” Yuuri says helplessly, thinking about _he seems very interested._ “I don’t… I don’t think anything else is necessary.”

“A mentor, then,” Viktor says easily, sitting up. Suddenly, it’s that much easier to catch his breath. “Is that what you want?”

With a small frown and a furrow that he can feel deep in his forehead, Yuuri asks, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be?” _Surely Viktor wouldn’t be asking… ~~~~_

“It’s what I can be.”

“Then… then…”

“Ah, would you look at the time.” Viktor glances at the clock by his bed and rolls to his feet, expression suddenly cool and detached, like someone flipped the switch. It’s the same look on his face last year, and the year before that – one of a mentor preparing his tribute for imminent death. His tone has changed, too, from delightedly teasing to a professional distance that Yuuri _feels_ widening between them. “I should let you rest. Get some sleep – it will be a long day tomorrow.” And just like that, he’s gone, the sliding door hissing shut with a sense of finality.

Dropping his head back against the wall with a heavy _thud_ , Yuuri stares up at the ceiling, tears stinging abruptly in his eyes. Somehow, even without trying, he’s already ruined any possibility for mentorship that Viktor might provide. He seemed almost as changeable as the temperamental sea on the cusp of a bad storm – playful and gentle one minute, and the next with every intention of dragging some helpless boat through the riptide.

_What if Minako was right?_

What if Viktor only cared for him to win if _Yuuri_ could make him care? Could make him want Yuuri to live like Yuuri wants to live – with every cell in his body and every fibre of his being, with a desire to retrieve his heart from the dusty station floor back in District 4 – what if that was the only way?

_Then you’ll just have to do that, won’t you, kiddo?_

His sister’s wry amusement cuts through his panic enough for him to see clearly – even if only for moments. Yuuri takes the time to steady his breath, to refocus. _I don’t know if I can do that_ , he thinks, then, _What would Masha do?_ Even as he asks the question, the answer is clear as fucking day: live, probably. His sister’s instinct for survival has always been so much more attuned than his, and her cut-and-dry approach to life in times of trouble has more often than not kept Yuuri from spiraling down after his mother.

Mari would tell him to just do it, if it meant that he lived. He remembers her voice, urgent and real: _Don’t give up._ Yuuri grits his teeth and thinks, _I can do you proud, can’t I?_

But the real question lay in the _how_ of things. How can Yuuri Katsuki, baby turtle, possibly romance the Capitol’s sex god, Viktor Nikiforov? Holding the interest of someone as flighty as Viktor Nikiforov seems to be a game all on its own, and unlike the Games, Yuuri has no idea of its rules, its parameters. Every media piece on Viktor shows that he works on whims, that he thrives on surprising his crowd. Even if he hasn’t paid any attention to Viktor at all, Yuuri can never forget a conversation he had with Mari that one day, over breakfast.

_He’s always surprising everyone_. Mari’s tone had been derisive, and Yuuri had frowned.

_Is that a bad thing?_

_Well it keeps him as the flavor of the month, so it depends on what you’re looking for, baby brother._ Mari had ruffled his hair fondly before scowling at the staticky screen once more with a mutter of, _I’d like to see_ him _surprised._

_Would that be enough?_ Yuuri, watching trees and trees flash by through the window, wonders for hours, and hours until—

In the silent haze of focus and uneasy grief, the pitching movement of the train as it speeds and curves through the country is oddly reminiscent of the sea, and so in a span of hours, Yuuri allows himself to be lulled by the imagined rock-rock-rocking of gentle waves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> am i a month late or a week early you decide
> 
> School + life ate me for a little bit. Hopefully I can meet the Friday-Saturday deadline this week (it's spring break, so yay writing time?). I have hope.
> 
> You might have noticed that the chapter count ticked up by two. My only excuse is that I have no self control when it comes to wordcount.
> 
> if you spot mistakes, hmu


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _At some point, his hand comes to rest on the small of Yuuri’s back, both a grounding force and a subtle reminder that Viktor has not forgotten, guiding them through the thickening crowd._
> 
> The Capitol watches. The parade reveals. And the narrative is set. Yuuri Katsuki is simply caught in the whirlwind of it all.

When the train touches base in the Capitol, the moment he steps out into sunlight, Yuuri is buffeted in all directions by the force of screams. For a moment, he wonders if this is what actually happens in the thick of it all – it always looked a bit calmer on the television – before he realizes that the crowd is calling for Viktor. It’s his name they’re screaming, his casual wave that enables their excitement even further.

The feeling that builds in Yuuri is one he doesn’t recognize. He’s _pathetically_ grateful for their distraction, on one hand – just the sight of the crowd from the train’s window was enough for his hands to go clammy and his face to bleach free of color.

But somewhere in the hours between awareness and sleep the previous night, Yuuri found the ghost of Mari’s fire and woke up to a flame stoked to life in his heart. A passion for life is something Mari has always excelled at, her defiance in every Reaping and through every hour of training a model for him to fight back his nerves long enough to set his sights on Viktor Nikiforov. The man is shockingly easy to distract, a fact he picks up when he – blushingly, mortifyingly, just that morning before Minako and Yuuko have stumbled out of their rooms – caught Viktor’s hand from across the table, the one gripping the spoonful of jam for his tea, and brought the utensil’s head into his mouth.

The slack-jawed look on Viktor’s face would have been priceless, if not for Yuuri’s own deep flush of sheer embarrassment.

The Capitol is full of bright colors and beautiful people, a fact that has Yuuri’s insides curling up to die. He can’t _possibly_ compete with anything here, not in his drab hand-me-downs and rumpled hair.

But, he reasons, he’s already lost any semblance of pride the moment he accepted Minako’s advice, and it’s that alone that has him catching the front of Viktor’s shirt when he turns away to grin and say something for the cameras, yanking his mentor down to his level.

Viktor stumbles, a fact that might have been amusing if Yuuri were anyone else. His eyes meet Yuuri’s, questioning and startled all at once.

“Don’t take your eyes off me.”

He’s blushing, of course he is, but his hand is also wound tight in Viktor’s shirt and there’s a certain glow in his mentor’s eyes that is darkly delighted and _something_ all at once – something that Yuuri might name desire, if he didn’t have the romantic experiences of a baby turtle.

“I won’t,” Viktor promises, and Yuuri lets him go, feeling his heart stumble over itself in his chest. True to his word, Viktor flashes smiles to the media, addresses the people necessary, but his eyes always return to Yuuri, lingering and dark. At some point, his hand comes to rest on the small of Yuuri’s back, both a grounding force and a subtle reminder that Viktor has not forgotten, guiding them through the thickening crowd.

And then they’re out of it, the screams of the crowd muffled by the layered glass separating the Training Center’s lobby from the rest of the world. Yuuri lets out a slow, shaky exhale. Viktor’s hand falls from his back, still looking at him, his expression thoughtful and calculating.

“You can stop now,” Yuuri mumbles, refusing to meet his mentor’s eyes. Yuuko and Minako waltz into the building a moment later, both with heads held high, Minako’s hand clasped around Yuuko’s shoulder.

“Ready to head upstairs?” Minako asks, perhaps oblivious to the tension in the air. Yuuko, however, is looking perceptively between them, one eyebrow raised. She offers Yuuri a small, comforting smile when they pass, and – flushing – he falls into place behind them, not checking to see if Viktor is following. Or if he’s still looking.

“You look pleased,” Minako says to Viktor in the elevator on their way up to the fourth floor, sounding grouchy.

Yuuri glances up. Viktor shrugs, his gaze still thoughtful on Yuuri’s face.

“I think I have a better idea of what to do now.” ~~~~

 

 

They barely had any time to settle down before Yuuri and Yuuko are hustled off in a flurry of motion to be cleaned up and inside out. Yuuri presses a hand gingerly to his silk-smooth cheeks, wondering if they’re still pinked from the scrub the way the skin of his limbs stood out in harsh color that has nothing to do with embarrassment.

His stylist, Mila – a pretty woman with fire-red hair and almost nondescript features but for the sharpened points of her canines and the cat-like slit of her pupils – fusses with the fabric around him, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles, rearranging the drape of cloth. When Yuuri first shifted uncomfortably under her too-familiar touch, he earned himself a prick of a pin and a scolding. But he can’t help the way his muscles tense with a desire to retreat, and so earned a few more.

From what he can feel, the costume for the Opening Ceremony is skin-tight but for the elegant drape of what feels like a half-skirt from his right hip, a shocking nod to the fall of the ribbon cinching the loose trousers well-worn in his district. Part of his right torso and most of his right arm is wrapped in a close-knitted mesh in black and gold, while the rest of the fabric is cool on his skin. The costume clings to him with his every movement, but Yuuri has the strangest feeling of being completely naked, even if _logically_ he knows he’s not.

Mila adds the final touches to his face, dabbing in little precise movements. Peeking at the jar in her hand, Yuuri sees the tiny silvery stars suspended in thick liquid. She pulls away when she’s satisfied, taking a long look at him before beaming. “Ready to take a look at yourself? Close your eyes!”

Yuuri doesn’t even have to respond, because she’s pulling him to the little platform in front of three floor-length mirrors. He barely manages to close his eyes before he catches a glimpse of himself, stumbling a little as she shoves him up a step and starts fussing over the fall of the half-skirt once again. “Okay, take a look!”

He opens his eyes, and his jaw drops.

He’s a piece of the horizon in the middle of the sea, from the ocean floor to the star-lit sky and sunset in between, little pastel rays spilling over his midsection and reaching up for his heart. In the sky on his body, two birds flutter whenever he moves, dancing tantalizingly close to each other before parting and starting over again.

His hair is beaded with little transparent gems that catch the light; one spills over his forehead, bigger and more brilliant than the rest, like the guide leading sailors home. Mila has slipped contacts in his eyes, assuring that Yuuri would be able to see well in those, and in the mirror his eyes were two universes, a vortex of stars spinning hypnotically in tandem. It takes Mila’s hand on his shoulder to pull him away from the vision in the mirror.

“Wow,” Yuuri says, because that’s _all_ he can say. Mila laughs.

“Georgi did a good job, didn’t he?” Mila says cheerily, admiringly. “We tried to incorporate what Viktor suggested, but I think the shimmer is a really nice touch.” Her finger trails over the line of his stomach, and he tenses involuntarily. Like she doesn’t notice, Mila turns and beams at the other stylist, who chuckles from behind Yuuri. He twitches with an aborted attempt to leap out of his skin.

“With a face like that, darling, he makes it _very_ easy,” says Georgi. The other stylist must be done with Yuuko; he circles Yuuri and lets out a loud, dreamy sigh. “ _Beautiful_. I like the makeup you gave him. It brings out his,” Georgi’s finger smooths over the little constellations like tiny, shimmery freckles spilling out from Yuuri’s eyes, following the smudge of makeup that stretched across his face like a little horizontal piece of the night sky, “ _Otherworldliness_. Viktor wasn’t lying when he said the boy would be a lovely canvas. If this is the view in District Four, I can see what the fuss is about. Almost enough for me to leave Anya!”

“You’d never,” Mila says, laughter in her voice. “It’s true love, with you and her, isn’t that what you said every minute of the last week?” She steps back to look Yuuri over, nodding decisively. “Too bad we can’t show any more of his skin, though. Such a waste. The audience would love that.”

Yuuri flushes, ducking his head, and bites back a stammering reply. Thankfully, neither stylist requires his response.

“How’s Yuuko?” Mila says, turning to Georgi. The older man clasps his hands together over his heart.

“ _Gorgeous_. Stunning. She’s a vision in that dress. I’d like to know what District Four feeds their children – first, _Viktor Nikiforov_ , and now these two.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Yuuri plays with the edge of his half-skirt, averting his gaze. He doesn’t quite know how to tell them that it’s only their combined efforts that make him look this good – he doesn’t quite pull it off just any other day. Steeling himself, he offers a quiet, “Thank you.”

“You’re so _sweet_ ,” Mila says delightedly. “You’re very welcome! It was our pleasure. Are you ready to go?”

He swallows, hard. “Do I have to be?”

They laugh, and help him off the little stage. “Remember,” Mila says cheerily as she loops her arm through Georgi’s. The older man drops a kiss on her hair, dramatically affectionate. “You’re beautiful. Just smile and wave at the crowd, and let them love you.”

 

 

Minako is the only half of their mentor team to show up before the ceremony starts, and there’s a clench in her jaw that makes Yuuri think of _Andel isn’t the only person he’ll have sex with_ and _He’s too easy_. In a dress that makes every movement look like the curl of waves in the ocean, Yuuko makes a mention of his name, almost tentative in the brewing storm of Minako’s face. Their mentor just gives a sharp shake of her head and says nothing further on the topic.

At least, until it’s almost time and Minako already has them placed on the carriage with clasped hands, their styling team fluttering around both of them for the last minute preparations, and Yuuri reaches out to pinch the sleeve of her shirt the way he used to as a child. Minako looks at him, eyes hard but always comforting, prepared to catch him if he falls.

Not for the first time, he wishes his mentor was her.

“If you see him, will you pass Viktor a message for me?”

She frowns imperceptibly to those who don’t know her, but Yuuri recognizes the shallow furrow of her brow.

“Tell him,” Yuuri says, taking a deep breath, “Tell him it’s already begun.” Their game, the push and pull of wills and _keep your eyes on me_ – he knows Minako is aware of it, saw the way she raised her eyebrows at him before they were rushed off for cleaning like laundry in silent question of _what was that, back there?_ She wouldn’t press unless he wants to bring it up, but she knows. He’s an open book in her eyes.

His former mentor looks unreadably at him, then smiles – hard, amused, disbelieving, then finally assuring, her hand catching Yuuri’s.

“I will,” she says. “And I promise you, he won’t.”

Then she’s gone in a whirlwind of bird-like styling assistants, their voices a nervous chirp in the background of the anthem playing. The gates open, and District One rolls through ahead. Yuuri steels himself, trying to imagine that every eye in the audience is Viktor, thinking that if he can hold that attention, he can survive. If he can say the command _don’t take your eyes off me_ with every wave and kiss and smile, if he can _god forbid_ seduce the crowd into never looking away, then he has – maybe, just _maybe_ – a chance. Just a sliver.

It’s all he can do.

Yuuko squeezes his hand gently, and he looks over, a question in his eyes.

“Ready?” she asks, raising an eyebrow, the silver stars by her eyes following the movement. Yuuri hesitates. Ready to make the crowds love them both, ready to step out into the eye of the storm, ready to fight for his life?

Taking a deep breath to steady the pounding of his heart, Yuuri pictures the easy smirk on Viktor’s face, and adopts one of his own. He nods at his district partner, who smiles.

“Ready,” he confirms, and their chariot rolls out towards the screaming crowd.

 

 

He can barely look at himself during the recap of the ceremony, but he seems to be the only one, judging by the commentary from JJ and Caesar Flickerman during the segment showcasing District Four. Yuuko is snickering under her breath even as she rubs his shoulder sympathetically, Minako has her head in her hands, and Viktor seems enraptured by the screen.

“You did really well,” Georgi offers, consolatory, and Yuuri can’t stop the little whimper of shame from leaving his lips. “I mean it, no one could take their eyes off you – the both of you, really. You commanded the show, like true performing veterans. It was… _beautiful_.”

“I can’t believe,” Yuuri says, and falls silent when Yuuko chokes a little on another bout of laughter that she struggles to silence.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, biting the inside of her cheek. She’s grinning. “It’s just…”

“—that shy, bashful boy we saw in his district has definitely taken a sharp one-eighty turn, wouldn’t you agree, JJ?” Caesar sounds utterly gleeful.

“After spending some time with Viktor Nikiforov, it’s hard to imagine anyone coming out innocent,” JJ says, in a voice that Yuuri can describe as wry. “Nikiforov has always been sex on legs.”

Viktor hums, lips curving up against his own knuckles resting on his cheek. “ _He_ would love to know,” he says, voice a low purr.

“Does Leroy still talk about when you and he…” Minako raises an eyebrow questioningly at Viktor, who just rolls his eyes, dropping any semblance of flirtation. His expression takes on one of weary annoyance.

“It’s JJ. What do you think?”

“As beautiful as his tribute is this year, I’m not surprised if Katsuki becomes one to watch, especially under Nikiforov’s tutelage,” Morooka, who has often been credited for pulling off the opening ceremony for every Games, acknowledges in response to one of the other commentators on the screen. Far too at ease with the too-personal conversation, Morooka adds, “And with Minako Okuwawa on Yuuko Azuma’s side, these two can well be formidable.”

“ _Blyat_ ,” Minako hisses, to general confusion.

“For mentors, those two haven’t exactly had the best luck,” Caesar says. “But I think that might be changing. Just look at them both! You can’t tell me that Four’s stylists didn’t just turn these two into the crowd favorites— _Oh!_ Ah, Katsuki’s learned a thing or two from his mentor.”

“He’s quite pretty,” JJ allows, and Yuuri flushes when onscreen-Yuuri gazes straight into the camera with a sultry expression. “And Four’s stylists, first-timer Mila Babicheva and veteran Georgi Popovich, did a really good job this year. Look at Yuuko Azuma’s dress! Four’s costumes are out of this world.”

“They _are_ amazing. Ah, district five!”

“You both did well, if… a little unexpectedly,” Minako says as onscreen JJ launches into an explanation of why it’s perfectly acceptable to wear a shapeless costume. Feeling the weight of her gaze on him, Yuuri shrinks a little into his seat. “The crowds loved you both.”

Shrugging, Yuuko says, “It’s really thanks to Georgi and Mila.” When Yuuri looks up, she’s turned her gaze on the stylists with a warm smile. “They made us look really good.”

“Of course, my darling,” Georgi says, sounding as though he’s close to tears at the compliment. Mila beams at them. “Like we said, you made it easy!”

“Your costumes were a big part of it,” Viktor says, elbow bent on the armrest of his chair, “But your presence is what really sold the performance. You are both… _eros_ and _agape_ , love on two different faces of the same coin.” At their bewildered look, Viktor elaborates, “Sexual and innocent love. No prizes for guessing who’s who.” He throws a mortified Yuuri a salacious wink.

“Oh no,” Yuuri mumbles into his palms.

“I think,” Minako interrupts, “That you can both drop that persona for now. Viktor and I will probably discuss how we’re going to sell you to sponsors in more detail… _privately_.” The narrow-eyed stare she fixes on her co-mentor is chilling, but Viktor just smiles. “But we should present the both of you as an indivisible team from now until the Games. You have the chemistry for it.”

“We do?” Yuuri looks uncertainly at Yuuko, who shrugs.

“Of course.” Shifting forwards, Viktor’s eyes flash between Yuuri and Yuuko. “What would you like to be to each other? Friends? Lovers?”

“ _What_ ,” Yuuko says, while Yuuri chokes on air. The conversation is strangely reminiscent of _is that what you want?_ but somehow, Yuuri thinks that this one is even more weighted.

Viktor raises one shoulder in an unapologetic shrug. “Your story isn’t yours, anymore, so we might as well embellish it. You’re both good-looking, and your names are so similar, the sponsors will _love_ the both of you if—”

“ _Privately_ , Nikiforov,” Minako cuts in, glowering.

Clearing her throat nervously, Yuuko says, “What do you want us to do, to show that we’re a team?” As she speaks, she glances at Yuuri, still hiding his reddened cheeks behind his hands. “I mean, we can spend time together, but maybe we should learn different skills for the arena, since we’re going to be allies.”

Minako shakes her head. “I want you both doing the same things – or at least, if you _have_ to pick up a different skill, do it so you’re still close by. I don’t want the others separating you, challenging you to anything.”

“Don’t show off,” Viktor offers. “If you know something really well, move onto the next station. The other tributes need to underestimate you if you’re going to have any element of surprise.”

Yuuri exchanges a glance with Yuuko again. “What about allies?” At that, Minako hesitates, and looks straight at Viktor, who leans back, expression thoughtful.

“I’ll take care of that,” he says at last. “And I’ll let you know. But if you get any offers, tell them you’ll think it over, and tell me as soon as you can.”

“I want the boys,” Yuuko says immediately. Yuuri looks at her in surprise. “From Nine, and Three. Phichit Chulanont, and Guang Hong Ji.”

He remembers Guang Hong Ji, but for a moment, Yuuri wonders who she means by _Phichit_ _Chulanont_ before he recalls the tiny thing making his way up to the stage, shoulders thrown back with false bravado. He immediately nods in agreement, sitting up, eyes going to their mentors. “Please,” he says.

Viktor winces, and Minako says, hesitantly, “They’re a little…”

“I don’t think we should underestimate them,” says Yuuko stubbornly. “Size and age means nothing – Viktor proved that when he won, didn’t he? I want them as allies. I don’t care if anyone else joins us. Please,” she echoes Yuuri, the combined forces of their gazes evidently enough to make both mentors crumble.

“Okay, okay, I’ll see what we can do.” Holding his hands out to them, Viktor adds, “But no promises.”

“Fine,” Yuuko agrees readily, even as her hand grips Yuuri’s tight in silent victory.

 

 

Sleep dances on the edges of his vision that night, eluding his increasingly desperate grasps. Time ticks, ticks, ticks down, the hours until the first day of training begins dwindling steadily, and Yuuri finds himself tangled in his sheets with a heart that races and sweat that clings to his skin. Somehow, his thoughts keep going to _is this what you want_ and _eros and agape_ , an endless spiral that draws him deeper and deeper – _is this what you want_ because he can do this in short bursts, like emoting in dance, but those emotions never follow him into the real world. _What if I can’t keep it up, what if I ruin everything_ —

He wrestles himself out of bed and slips out of his room.

After pouring himself a glass of water in the kitchenette, Yuuri slumps against the counter and rubs his palms up to his eyes, exhaling slow. _Stupid_. So stupid for his thoughts to sink down that well-beaten path into unnamable terrors, to even _think_ he has a chance. _You’ll be easy pickings_ and _you don’t fucking fight back_ breathe and grow in his head, feeding off the stumbling thunder of his heart.

“Fuck,” he hisses at himself, gripping his glass tight. _Stop. Stop._

The words breathe and grow and feed, and Yuuri digs his nails into his arm. He needs to _stop_ , why can’t he stop thinking himself into circles, why can’t he just _be someone else_ —

_Never forget._

_Minako_ – she’ll know what to say to stop the cycle.

Pushing the glass away, not caring to see where it slides, Yuuri makes his way towards her room, trying to stifle the desperation in case someone else sees – but he can’t stop himself from running the last two feet, pushing her door open without knocking.

“Minako?”

She’s not there.

_Minako?_

She’s not.

He backs out of her untouched room, wringing his hands. Who else can he go to? He can’t wake Yuuko, she needs her rest as much as he needs his. It’s not fair on her, if he makes her calm him down, and he doesn’t know if she can, but that only leaves—

Viktor.

His strides are much less eager when he makes his way to the other mentor’s room, but he needs- he needs his brain to _stop thinking_ and he can’t do that on his own, and if Minako isn’t there—

Viktor’s door is already open, and Yuuri is a moment away from pushing it open when he hears Viktor.

He freezes.

“—can pull it off. Didn’t you watch the ceremony?”

“No,” Minako snarls, her voice a barely restrained hiss, and Yuuri starts. _Minako?_ He shifts, trying to catch sight of them in the mirror – he spots the back of Minako’s head and a sliver of her face, and the vehement whip of her hair with her denial while Viktor lounges on his bed as though he hasn’t a care in the world. “We’re not going that route, Nikiforov.” There’s a set in her jaw that reminds Yuuri of, _They’re going to eat him alive_ and _There’s always a solution_. Minako says, “The Capitol gets quite enough of District Four out of you.”

Something in her tone makes Viktor’s irises contract, even if nothing in his expression changes. Yuuri notices, because his eyes are so light that every flicker is a beacon, even from so far away. Viktor says, lightly, “I’m not sure they feel the same way. Besides, it’s too late to change it now. This is who he’ll be to them. He has to stick with it.”

“If they want him after, Viktor, I will come after you with _everything_ , for the _love_ of—”

“Let’s,” Viktor says, holding up a hand to stop her tirade. “Get Yuuri through the Games, and then we’ll worry about _after_. Does that sound fair?”

Yuuri can’t help the intake of breath at the sound of his name, and Minako whips around. “Who’s there,” she says, voice sharp; meekly, Yuuri pushes the door in.

“I was just…” His eyes dart between Minako and Viktor. “I was looking for you,” he admits, dropping his gaze. “I… I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking.”

“Oh Yuuri,” Minako says with a sigh, at the same time Viktor offers, “You can sleep with me.” There’s a sly twist to his words that has Yuuri blushing at the carpet and Minako growling a low, “ _Watch yourself, Nikiforov.”_ Viktor hums, voice innocent as he says, “What?”

“Why can’t you sleep, Yuu-chan?” Minako rests a hand on his hair worriedly. “What were you thinking about?”

“I don’t want to be someone I’m not,” Yuuri says quietly. “I heard you both talking about it. I can’t do that, not for… not for days. I’ll fuck it up somehow, and then it’ll fuck all your plans up, and then I’ll get one or both of us killed. I don’t want that.”

A long sigh comes from the bed. Viktor sits up, arms bent over his knees. “Yuuri, not one of you has a choice in your image—”

“No.” Yuuri shakes his head. “I mean, I know, sort of. We’re stereotypes in the Games, and. We’re not _really_ who they say we are? But. I don’t. I don’t want to… to be _Eros_. I’m not like that. I’ll fuck it up.”

“Could have fooled me,” Viktor mutters.

“Yuu-chan.” Minako sighs, drawing him into her arms.

“I don’t know if I can keep it up,” Yuuri mumbles into her arm.

“We’ll figure something out,” Minako assures him. “Viktor _is_ right, partially: we can’t just make you turn around and be someone different now that your audience knows you as _this –_ but we can find a compromise, I’m sure of it. Something a little more you.”

“Okay.” Yuuri burrows into her grip, feeling his exhaustion climb up on him, bit by bit. He fights it off briefly, trying to straighten up before he collapses entirely.

There’s a rustle of sheets, and Viktor’s standing next to them, one hand curling loosely around his wrist. Minako pulls away slowly with a murmur of, _We should put him to bed, he’s too heavy for me to carry alone._ “We’ll figure it out, Yuuri Katsuki,” he murmurs, thumb smoothing over the skin of his knuckles. Yuuri’s entire body tilts towards him, and Viktor catches him. _I’ve got it, don’t worry_ , sounds in his ears, a rumble of Viktor’s chest.

“I can walk,” Yuuri tries to say as Viktor lifts him easily. “M’not that tired yet.”

Viktor’s hand curls loosely around his arm, touch electric even through the rising haze. “Shh. Don’t fight the current, Yuuri Katsuki.” His voice is low and soothing against the shell of Yuuri’s ear. “Just relax. We’ll take care of you.”

He falls asleep before they make it to his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i mean... i guess i technically posted during spring break?
> 
> hmu with edits if you have them.


	4. iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Of course. Mari and I kept an eye on you, you know. You were always attracting trouble.” Sadness tinges the edge of Yuuko’s smile. “I suppose I have you to thank for falling in love.”_
> 
>  
> 
> We learn about Yuuko and meet the other Yuri. Our Yuuri makes promises.

The morning comes faster than he expects, and Yuuri wakes feeling as though he has barely closed his eyes at all. With a low groan, he buries his face into his pillow, then rolls over at Minako’s behest before she thinks to drag him out of bed herself.

A splash of cool water wakes him up a little, and by the time he’s stumbled out of his room, Yuuko is already seated at the dining table chewing on a buttery croissant with a mug of steaming brown liquid sitting in front of her. She looks up at his entrance, and then taps the mug.

“This is really good.”

“What is it?”

“Melted chocolate. It’s hot, though, be careful.”

Nodding silently, Yuuri gets himself a mug, wrapping cold fingers around it and allowing the steam to sooth the tension in his face.

“You look about as tired as I feel,” Yuuko observes, and Yuuri lets out a little grunt, not quite in the mood to have a full conversation yet. His eyes slide shut. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Not really,” he murmurs. “Just a little.” He raises his eyes to her.

Yuuko just nods and says, “Well, at least we’ll look like a team in that, too.” The joke falls flat, but Yuuri lets out a little huff of laughter anyway. His body won’t let him do much more, and he slumps a little over his drink.

Absently, he starts picking a paper napkin apart, watching the little pieces like snow flutter from his hands. The motion makes him think of winter at home, of the pure white snow that settled inland and dwindled to nothing the closer they ran to the sea. Mari liked to stuff a handful of snow down his shirt every year until she was fifteen and he was fast enough to get away at last.

“What are you doing to that poor napkin?” Andel Rivera snatches the napkin from Yuuri’s hand, clicking his tongue disapprovingly. “Where. Are. Your. Table manners!”

Bewildered, Yuuri blinks down at the table and the pile of napkin chips he’s made in front of his mug of melted chocolate. He raises his eyes to Andel, thrown by his reaction. “Um.”

“These are for wiping your mouth,” Andel explains. “See?” He demonstrates, then primly takes a seat at the end of the table, his nose in the air. Yuuri opens his mouth to say something, then closes it when he realizes he has absolutely _nothing_ to say. _What just happened?_

Opposite him, Yuuko muffles a little snort into her mug. When Yuuri chances a peek, her shoulders are shaking in silent laughter, and suddenly, inexplicably, he has to bite his lower lip to stop himself from laughing as well – the funny side turning to face him in a single motion.

They’re still stifling giggles when Georgi pads out of his room, bright-eyed and cheerful. “You two look like you’re in a good mood,” Georgi observes happily, ruffling Yuuri’s hair. “Ready for your first day? I’ll have to get you both dres- _what_ did you do to your _face_?”

He sounds so horrified that Yuuri’s hands automatically go to his cheeks, which heat like a log in a fire. “Um,” he says again, laughter immediately dying. “I don’t?” Did he smear chocolate on his face by accident?

He can only look over at Yuuko for a split second before Georgi grabs his chin, tilting his head from side to side with an expression that is so completely heartbroken that Yuuri doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s his just him. It’s only when he does the same to Yuuko that Yuuri starts to think that this might be a little bit more than his biology. “Did you _both_ decide to skip out on sleep? You look like pandadoodles!”

“Pan…dadoodles?” Yuuri says, uncertainly, exchanging a wide-eyed look with Yuuko, whose expression is comically confused.

“They might not be familiar with pandadoodles, Georgi,” Andel says, sounding world-weary. “Yuuri was shredding a napkin when I walked in.”

“The horror,” Yuuko says under her breath, and Yuuri snorts, coughing quickly to cover up the sound. Georgi helpfully pats him on the back.

“They’re household pets,” he explains, once Yuuri isn’t at risk of choking to death, thumbing at the bags under Yuuri’s eyes with his free hand. “Usually white and black, with two of the black spots over their eyes. They look just like you, except _this_ ,” Georgi’s nail digs a little into Yuuri’s cheek, and he winces, “is a cute look on _them_. But don’t worry, I might have something in my skincare kit for this very problem.” His voice drops to a mutter. “Mila _said_ it wasn’t necessary…” Shaking his head with a long-suffering sigh, Georgi sweeps back into his room with a, “I’ll be back soon with something for those bags, my darlings.”

“Aren’t we just training this morning?” Yuuri asks Yuuko lowly. Yuuko shrugs.

“I thought so. I didn’t think that was a dress-up occasion.”

They look up with Viktor walks in, looking perfectly put together. He offers them a smile as he crosses to the buffet table and makes himself a cup of tea. As he drops a spoonful of jam into his mug, Yuuri recalls the _last_ time he had breakfast with Viktor and turns bright red.

“Yuuri?” Yuuko touches his wrist. “You okay?”

Humming noncommittally, Yuuri ducks his head and focuses on his drink as Viktor takes a seat next to him.

“You both look bright and awake,” he says cheerfully. “How did you sleep?”

“Why do we need to get dressed up?” Yuuko asks.

Viktor frowns. “What? For the interview?”

“No, today. Georgi said we need to look good for today.”

Drumming a finger against the table, Viktor looks between them for a moment, and then shakes his head with a smile. “You’re not dressing up for anything today. It’s because you both look dead on your feet, and that gives the other tributes an advantage over you, because they’ll know you’re not prepared. And,” Viktor holds up a finger, “Coordinating your dress means that half your job’s done for you – the others know you’re a team.”

“Is that what we want?” Yuuri asks, frowning down at his hot chocolate. It’s at the last few sips, and he wants more, but that involves far too much effort than he cared to give just then.

Viktor takes a sip of his tea, sighing with satisfaction. “The others know they won’t be able to separate you, that way.” He tilts his head sideways and gives Yuuri a wink that he barely catches. “Speaking of.” Viktor’s face goes serious, gaze moving between the two of them. “I want you two to spend a break with a different group every time. Get to know the others.”

“Sure,” Yuuko agrees easily without looking up from her croissant.

With a frown at her, Yuuri says dubiously, “Will they want us to?”

Viktor shrugs. “You won’t know until you try, will you?”

Self-consciously, Yuuri acknowledges his advice with a tiny nod and rubs at his eyes before dropping his head back tiredly. A pleased sigh escapes him before he can stop it: the back of the chair is more forgiving than hard glass suggests. As he settles in, he murmurs, “Wake me up with Georgi gets back?”

“Mm.” Viktor sips his tea again, settling into his own seat with a little hum.

“I didn’t realize you were both so… close.”

Andel’s voice is unreadable, and Viktor says mildly, “He is my tribute. There’s a certain degree of camaraderie that goes into that, as I’m sure you well know, Andel.” There’s a pause, and then Viktor says, “But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you.”

Yuuri cracks an eye open to look at the escort and his mentor in askance, but finds himself looking down the length of Viktor’s arm.

He stills.

Out of the corner of his mouth, Viktor murmurs, “Your move, beautiful.” He flashes a little wicked smile.

 _Ugh._ Yuuri groans inwardly, letting his eyes fall shut for a moment as he collects himself. In theory, he can ignore this and just let Viktor be his pillow until the time came for them to leave – but damn it, Viktor doesn’t play _fair_. ~~~~

 _At least you have his attention_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like Masha points out. 

Turning his head, he lets the tips of his hair slide teasingly over his eyes and curl in the crook of Viktor’s elbow, exhaling a breath to dance over his skin – and _cuddles_ in, tucking his knees to his chest and closing his eyes properly. Viktor stiffens, seemingly surprised, before relaxing into his side, his hand reaching up to pet Yuuri’s hair. Humming, pleased, Yuuri settles into the touch and dozes until Georgi and Mila burst out of their rooms like twin tornados. He’s pulled from his seat into a more acceptable position for the stylists to fix the purple bruises beneath their eyes, and when he catches Yuuko’s eye, they’re both laughing.

Somehow, it makes the day seem lighter.

  

“So,” Yuuko says conversationally. Yuuri hums a question, staring down at the row of berries in front of him with his brow furrowed in concentration as he tries to remember which one is nightlock. He dismisses the pale green ones, and the ones he knows to be blackberries, and frowns at the remaining three. “You and Viktor seem close.”

“He’s my mentor,” Yuuri mutters distractedly, hand hovering over one of the bushels. It _might_ be the right one, but they might also just be blueberries. On the other hand, the berries to its left had a significantly more sinister, reddish tint to its skin…

“I’m not getting cuddled by Minako, or letting her run her fingers through my hair.” Her tone is teasing, soft enough that he knows no one else will overhear, but Yuuri can’t help but cast a quick look around to make sure.

Reprovingly, he hisses, “Yuuko.”

“Sorry,” she says with a little laugh. Deftly, her fingers sort through the different flowers in three separate piles – edible, not edible, poisonous. “I just think you’re very cute, the two of you.”

Averting his gaze, Yuuri picks up a bushel of berries and mumbles, “It’s just for show. He’s Viktor Nikiforov.”

“And he… likes to touch you a lot?”

With a shrug, Yuuri shows their instructor the berries. “Are these the right ones?”

She inspects them for half a second before shaking her head. “Just plain, unripe blueberries. See this little tail here? Nightlock won’t have this part.”

Yuuri sighs, and plops them back on the table in defeat. “I’m going to die to inedible food,” he tells Yuuko, who snorts.

“I’ll stop you before you do anything stupid,” she promises, reaching up to tuck a flower behind his ear. “Beautiful.”

Flushing lightly at the compliment, Yuuri touches the petals. “Thank you.”

She smiles brightly at him, patting his cheek, and then her eyes slide past his face to the other end of the training room. “Oh, look, Guang Hong made a friend.” Yuuri glances over at her pleased tone to see Leo de la Iglesia shadowing the smaller boy, his posture threatening all others to stay away. The other tributes fall back as they advance around the bend towards the hunting station, voices falling silent in their wake.

“I’m glad,” Yuuri says after a pause. With a shy smile, the boy from Three looks up at his apparent protector, pointing to the knots then tugging on his hand.

“Me too,” Yuuko says sincerely, and Yuuri looks over at her curiously. She doesn’t say anything more, serenely returning to her flowers.

 

 

From the edible plants station, Yuuri and Yuuko make their way through the other basic survival skills – from fire-making to hunting and fishing. At the final station, while Yuuko aims the fishing spear with deadly accuracy, Yuuri finds himself weaving human-sized nets in the trapping station and rigging them up with ease, much to the approval of his trainer.

They skirt the sparring area, but it’s much easier said than done. Set up in the middle of the room, it is obviously designed to be the main attraction to the tributes: the area is almost consistently in use by the other careers, who often beckoned to Yuuko and Yuuri both on the basis that they were from District Four. The female tribute from District One went so far as to tug on Yuuko’s hands. “Come on! You can join us,” she insists.

It’s only by the force of Yuuko’s sheer friendliness that they didn’t make an enemy out of Isabella Yang then and there.

“I thought she wasn’t going to leave,” Yuuri murmurs as they huddle in the station for improvisational weapons, tucked out of sight from the sparring stage.

“Hmm.” Yuuko ties a knot around her spear and tilts it back and forth, squinting. “This looks out of shape.”

“It is out of shape. I think you have it backwards.”

“Ugh.” Tugging viciously on the end of her rope, she lets the stone blade clatter to the ground. “I was never good at making things. He always did much better with this sort of stuff.”

Her voice is low enough that Yuuri lets the words slide over him like water, her easy presence by now a constant balm at his side. Thoughtfully, he turns the stone blade he’s trying to sharpen over in his hands. How Viktor survived the first half of his games with nothing more than a clump of rock seems even more impossible now that Yuuri is looking at one. How Viktor got _two kills_ with nothing more than a clump of rock sounds like nothing less than a legend, if Yuuri doesn’t vividly remember the splatter of blood across silver hair and pale skin as Viktor brought the rock down again, and again, and again, in vicious desperation.

His fingers falter, and Yuuri dips his head over the badly made spear. It’s hard to believe that was almost seven full years ago. He’d been old enough to remember every moment, and young enough that the images haunted him in his dreams for weeks on end. Viktor’s return heralded Yuuri’s youthful realization monsters did not always live in the darkness beneath his bed.

And yet, here he is, playing with fire.

“I was going to marry him, you know.”

Yuuri’s hand fumbles on the knot he’s tying around his makeshift weapon, and he drops the rope in his surprise. It slithers to his feet in a loose curl, and he bends to retrieve it, taking the moment to settle the shock from his face. Clearing his throat, he stammers, “V- _Viktor_?”

“No.” Yuuko gives him a sidelong glance, the corners of her eyes crinkling with amusement. “Takeshi.”

It takes Yuuri a moment to recall _Takeshi_ , because the name comes with a flash of guilt and the vision of broad shoulders brushing by him for the elevated platform in Four. Then, all at once, he recalls the burly, dark-haired boy from the previous Games with vivid clarity – Takeshi Nishigori had gone down to the half-mad girl from District Seven, the one who tore the throats out of her victims with her teeth. Yuuri gives an involuntary shudder at the memory, his stomach roiling with startling emotions: anger, fear, terror, regret.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says carefully, unsure. He glances at her sidelong, nibbling on his lower lip. “I didn’t know.”

Yuuko shakes her head, tension in the line of her shoulders. “We met properly after I saw him… with you. That must have hurt, by the way.”

Blinking owlishly, Yuuri has to think about what she means before— _Oh_. He flushes at the memory of childish incompetence. “You were watching that?” He realizes now why the name also dredges up other images, like being tipped over the edge of the sparring ring headfirst, and the subsequent, jarring apology not a week later – Takeshi had been one of his bullies until, suddenly, he wasn’t.

“Of course. Mari and I kept an eye on you, you know. You were always attracting trouble.” Sadness tinges the edge of his district partner’s smile. “I suppose I have you to thank for falling in love.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says again, guilt crashing against the other emotions like a tidal wave.

“Why? He made me the happiest I’ve been in a long time.” She rests a hand on his shoulder, expression soft and growing distant. “We were so sure we’d be okay. It was his last year, and I had two more – we thought, if anything, someone would volunteer in our place, someone who wanted it… but of course, nobody wants to be the next to fail, do they?” Her tone takes on one of self-consideration, as though Yuuri is no more than the wall at her back. If her hand were not closed around his shoulder, Yuuri would take the chance to slip away. “He asked me to wait for him, before he left. He said he’d be back, because we were… destined. The sap.” Her laugh is low and wet. Yuuri hesitantly rubs her arm, looking around the room. No one’s paying them any attention, but it can’t hurt to check. “I was pregnant; did you know?”

The question doesn’t warrant an answer, but Yuuri shakes his head anyway.

“We didn’t know, so by the time I found out… well. They were dying, and Takeshi was gone. Sometimes I wish we’d known before – maybe it would have made him fight harder to get home. He’d always wanted girls, and I could have given him three. I did give him three,” she murmurs. “They’re with him, aren’t they?”

Her voice, soft and plaintive, prompts Yuuri to say, “Yeah. Forever.”

“Good.” Yuuko closes her light-colored eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Good.”

With nothing more to do, Yuuri wraps an arm around her shoulders and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Yuuko touches his arm gently. He looks over to see her warm smile returning life into her eyes. “It’s not your fault,” she whispers, as the buzzer sounds, shattering the activity around them as training breaks for lunch. “But thank you.”

 

 

“Hi,” a voice at Yuuri’s elbow says, and he startles so badly that he makes a jagged line of dark green across his arm, ruining his efforts at camouflage. Yuuko snickers at him when he looks down at Phichit Chulanont, youthful face beaming up at him. “You have something on your arm,” he says cheekily, pointing to the line he caused.

“Um, yeah,” he says, bewildered. “I was…” Vaguely, he waves his hand towards the glimmering backdrop of mottled sunlight on deep green grass that he had been trying to replicate on his own skin.

“You’re not terrible,” Phichit concedes, taking Yuuri’s arm. He winces at the placating tone as Phichit turns his arm this way and that. “You could use a bit less dark green, though.” The boys eyes are big and sparkling.

“Hi, Phichit,” Yuuko says happily as Yuuri stammers uselessly. “Can I call you Phichit?”

“Of course!” Dropping Yuuri’s arm, he peers over at Yuuko’s handiwork. “Oh, you’re much better.”

“Thank you,” she says, pleased. “We didn’t get to do this yesterday, but I thought it would be a good skill to pick up for this morning.”

“I like painting. Do you want me to teach you?” Phichit looks back at Yuuri, blinking, and his lips curve up in a big, friendly smile. “The baker lets me decorate his cakes, sometimes,” he explains, picking up the paintbrush and taking Yuuri’s arm again. He starts dotting across the dark line he caused, blending it into the background. “This is a little different, but the colors should be about the same! And then you can both teach me how to tie some knots, right?”

“Okay,” Yuuri agrees as Yuuko’s shoulders start to shake with uncontainable laughter, helpless as they’re swept up in the current of the boy’s enthusiasm.

Later, they sit in a loose triad for lunch and Phichit chatters on about his home in District Nine, about his little rodent pets that he used to keep in his pockets until he was Reaped (“They wouldn’t let me take one in as a token,” the boy says mournfully, to Yuuri’s wide eyes and Yuuko’s laughter), about his younger siblings, his parents and dancing (“You dance, too?” he cries when Yuuri mentions it, “We should dance together!”). Yuuri props his chin in his hands and watches the boy go on a mile a minute, fingers fluttering in the air to form the shapes of his vivid descriptions.

Yuuko lets out a little sigh that Phichit doesn’t catch, and Yuuri glances over, studying the expression on his district partner’s face curiously.

“You really love kids,” he says softly on their way back up to the Fourth floor, too low for anyone else to hear.

She smiles, brittle. “I’ve always wanted a boy.”

 

 

Pressed close on the loveseat that night, Viktor has his arm around Yuuri again, his posture so casual that they might be his parents seated on the couch back home, leaning easily into each other. It’s all Yuuri can do to will his apprehension down, his hands playing nervously with his sleeve, his trousers, a loose thread on the cushions. Without saying a word, Viktor scoops his hand easily into his free one, and just like that, they’re holding hands.

He swallows, hard.

On the couch, Minako is looking at him with an inscrutable expression, but she hasn’t said anything yet, so he assumes he’s doing alright. Her arms are crossed, though, which often preludes a long lecture about a sickled foot or a floppy arm – but her eyes flick between him and Viktor’s face. He wonders which one of them she’s planning on reaming out today.

“Sorry I’m late,” Yuuko says, cutting into the tension easily. Breathing a sigh of relief, Yuuri looks up at her as she settles next to Minako. Behind her, Mila, Georgi and Andel trail in, taking seats around the sleek coffee table in the middle. Mila raises her eyebrows at Yuuri when she notices Viktor’s hand, then widens her eyes dramatically, a grin on her face. He blushes.

“Aw, I thought you’d save that for me,” Viktor teases, squeezing his shoulder.

Yuuri says something incomprehensible even to his ears, yanking himself out of Viktor’s hold. Viktor starts laughing.

“Now that we’re all here,” Minako interrupts, glaring at Viktor. “Why don’t you tell us what Michele said?”

Suppressing his smile, Viktor folds his hands in front of him and leans back, gazing around at the group with an easy smile. His eyes land on Yuuko, then Yuuri. “Well… I have news about a potential alliance for the both of you – you’ve got a few interested parties, but since we’re not going the Career route this year, I think your best option is with District Six and Seven. Michele Crispino will do anything to protect his sister, and that works to your advantage – he’ll be fighting doubly as hard as anyone to get sponsors for your alliance.” Viktor looks pleased with himself. “Mikhail Jorge, on the other hand, is large enough that he’ll be considered the main threat in your group, if any.”

“Woodcutting, right?” Mila says, raising an eyebrow when Yuuko mutters something rude under her breath. “He must have some very strong arms.”

Nodding, Viktor continues, “At the very least, he’ll be able to draw negative attention away from the two of you.”

“So you want us to… hide behind him?” Yuuko says, frowning. “What makes you think he’ll _let_ us? He doesn’t care about anyone besides himself.”

“Not hide,” Minako corrects her. “We do need the both of you to have _some_ screen time. And you’re right, he’s one of our more…” She tosses a serenely smiling Viktor a glare, “ _Egotistical_ possibilities, but neither of us think that he’s inherently _bad_. He might be misguided, but he’s less likely to stab you in the back than, say, that District Two female.”

“Betrayal is the last thing you need,” Andel says knowledgeably, giving them both a sage nod. Yuuri bites his lower lip, lowering his gaze to his hands as he tries to suppress a grin while Yuuko coughs into her palm, ducking her head away from their escort.

Thankfully, Minako interrupts before they can break off into peals of laughter at their oblivious escort’s expense: “Mikhail has the build of a close combat fighter, more so than Yuuri or yourself. He’s a good choice for that reason, too – the other tributes might be a bit warier with him around, giving you both room to move when you need to.”

The truth of that had been plain earlier that day – Mikhail Jorge had been swinging his axe around at the trainer with single-minded viciousness until the bell rang. “That’s why you don’t want us showing off,” Yuuri realizes, eyes darting up between Minako and Viktor. “To… make us, what, less of a threat?”

“Something like that,” Minako says softly.

“What about Phichit?” Yuuko interrupts. “I think he wants an alliance with us, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” Viktor admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “Ah, Cialdini was quite… relieved, I think, that you both wanted Chulanont.” He’s frowning at them, gaze moving slowly from Yuuko to Yuuri. “You have to realize – having Phichit as an ally might be more of a burden to you than he is a help. He doesn’t actually serve a _purpose_ …”

Yuuri turns to face him in disbelief, digging his fingers into his leg. “You _promised_.”

Holding out his hands in placation, Viktor agrees, “Yes, I did, and I told you I’d make the deal. But this is just a… warning. Sometimes it’s not… it’s not the easiest to watch your ally die, especially one so young. If Phichit gets injured, or if you do something stupid to protect him, it makes it that much harder for us to keep one or both of you alive, you know that.” His eyes searched Yuuri’s face, bidding him to answer a question he doesn’t hear.

Frowning, Yuuri lifts his chin defiantly and presses his fingers harder into his thigh. There’s no way he’s going to cut Phichit loose – not after _I like painting_ and _Do you want me to teach you?_ “Well, consider us warned,” he says, through gritted teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yuuko glaring at Viktor, who looks slightly stunned, and feels a rush of warmth towards her at their solidarity.

“Yuuri,” Minako says gently. He doesn’t budge, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Yuuri, look at me,” she says again, and Yuuri reluctantly turns his head to face her. “Viktor makes a good point. What we’re trying to say is, if you’re doing this, you need to be prepared in case something happens to him. Some things are… difficult, but if one of you is going to come back alive, then you’ll have to be prepared to watch that happen.”

“We _know_ , sensei.” The words don’t come from his mouth, and all eyes turn to Yuuko, who’s staring at Minako with something in her eyes that reminds Yuuri of _I was going to marry him_ , of Takeshi Nishigori. “We’re not stupid. Even if the both of us make it to the end, only one of us gets to go home.” Her voice wobbles, her fingers clench, unclench; and Yuuri stares down at his own fists, white-knuckled and trembling. Unbidden, the child’s cry rises out of his memories like it rose out of the crowd: _I w-want to g-go_ home _!_ But, swallowing hard, he remembers her voice from that morning, brittle and low: _I’ve always wanted a boy._

 _You want more than I’ve ever wanted_ , Yuuri thinks, taking a slow, steadying breath as the pounding of his heart stills to a steady, assured beat. _You’ve survived more than I ever will_. It’s a revelation to unknot his stomach, to release the tension he had not recognized in his shoulders and coil, assured, in his chest as _purpose_.

“Let’s get some rest,” Mila says softly into the ensuing silence. “Rest up, avoid a repeat of our first morning.” There’s a warm smile on her face when Yuuri glances at her, and she winks at him playfully, stretching her legs out in front of her before popping to her feet. “Good night!”

“Don’t think too hard,” Minako tells them as she rises to follow. “I’m going to get a drink.”

One by one, the others file back out after Minako. Yuuko lingers by the steps leading out of the sunken lounge. The weight of her gaze is heavy on Yuuri, and when he meets her eyes he finds the same fire from the Reaping and steel in the hard line of her mouth. She gives him a tiny, tiny nod and somehow – somehow, he knows what she’s thinking. _I want to go home_.

 _I’ll keep you alive_ , he promises in return, dipping his head slightly, never looking away.

“Something you need, Yuuko?”

Viktor’s voice cuts into his thoughts, and Yuuri glances at him, surprised. His mentor has been so quiet that Yuuri almost forgot that he still sat next to him, one arm draped over the back of the chair, close enough that Yuuri can feel the rise and fall of his chest by his shoulder.

He swallows, averting his gaze.

“No,” Yuuko says slowly, eventually. She seems to shake herself, her hand resting on the silver banister as she offers a small smile to Yuuri. “See you in the morning.”

As she slips away, Yuuri feels Viktor turn his full attention to him – there’s a soft sigh that ruffles his hair by his ear, the gentle press of Viktor’s fingers to his knee, and the weight of a wordless question on the side of his face. Squirming uncomfortably, Yuuri leans away from him and clears his throat nervously.

“I’m going to… to my room,” he says quietly, shuffling to get off the loveseat. Viktor’s hand on his wrist stops him, and he looks over, startled. “Viktor?” His mentor stares at him, brow furrowed, like Yuuri is some kind of odd-looking muttation that he still isn’t quite used to. Clearing his throat, Yuuri pointedly tugs on his hand, still caught in Viktor’s tight grip, and his mentor lets go but doesn’t look away. “What?”

Viktor stirs, blinking slowly. “Ah. Nothing,” he says, and slides away to get to his feet. “Good night, Yuurochka. Get some rest for tomorrow.” His fingers brush – slowly, thoughtlessly, perhaps – over the top of Yuuri’s head, and Viktor offers him a small, tired smile. “Don’t do anything stupid, hm?”

He slips away, and Yuuri stares after him with his stomach on the floor and the air, suddenly, so very hard to breathe.

His name, softly remade into its affectionate form by a man who isn’t family, lingers in the silence long after Viktor has gone.

 

 

“Sara’s district partner is watching us,” Yuuko says in Yuuri’s ear on the last day before their private sessions, her voice barely audible amidst the clanging of Emil Nekola’s ferocious attack on the swords master. Yuuri follows the subtle tilt of her chin towards Yuri Plisetsky from District Six, his face pinched with annoyance, looking like he’s wrestling with a particularly unpleasant thought. When Yuuri catches his eye, Plisetsky’s expression startles briefly before twisting into a sneer.

Surprised, Yuuri yanks his gaze away, fixing his attention instead on Phichit clambering up a net of ropes with the tip of his tongue between his teeth. The determined look of his face has Sara Crispino, clinging to her own half of the net next to him, giggling helplessly, and Phichit yelps something at her that has her practically doubled over precariously. Out of the corner of his mouth, Yuuri murmurs, “What’s he staring at?”

“You, I think.” Yuuko cups her hands to her mouth when Phichit misses a step and has to fumble for footing. “Come on, Phichit! Don’t let Sara catch up to you!”

“ _Me_? What did I do?”

Shrugging, Yuuko nudges him towards the starting mark, the tips of her shoes clipping his heels when she follows closely behind. “Don’t know. We can ask Sara when she gets down from there.”

Once Phichit is safely on the ground, Sara drops from her impressive height, landing lightly on her feet with a grin plastered on her face. “That was fun. You okay?” She beams down at Phichit, who grins back at her and exaggeratedly tosses his hair out of his face.

“Well, I _did_ win.”

“Don’t get cocky, _kid_ ,” Mikhail chides Phichit as he joins them, twirling a staff in his hands. “This good enough to catch a fish, Four?” Yuuri catches the staff against his chest with a quiet _oof_ when Mikhail throws it lengthwise towards him. Ignoring Mikhail’s snicker and Yuuko’s scowl, he runs his fingers carefully over the wood to its knobbly, rounded ends.

“Um, not really. Not unless you want to clobber a fish to death.” He tosses it back, less aggressively, with a quick glance at Yuuko. “You might want to put a knife on it, or something.”

Phichit snickers as Mikhail mutters something very rude about hunting, and chirps, “Aren’t you both going to start?”

“Get out of my way, Four.”

The voice isn’t Yuuko’s, but he turns to look at her anyway, surprised. With her brows furrowed in confusion, she’s not looking at him; her eyes are fixed on the point over his shoulder, both eyebrows slightly raised. “What do you want, Six?”

Whirling around, Yuuri finds himself face to face with a scowling Yuri Plisetsky; his expression is no less irritable up close, Yuuri notes, too surprised to do much else. Plisetsky’s scowl deepens. “Don’t fucking stare at me, asshole. I want to talk to Sara.”

“Sure,” Sara says, blinking in confusion, at the same time Yuuri says, uncertainly, “I wasn’t staring.”

“Then fuck _off_!” Plisetsky’s hands slam into his chest, one quick, forceful shove that has him stumbling back a couple of steps, reeling a little from the younger boy’s sheer strength. Someone catches him before he falls flat on his back, and he looks around gratefully at Sara.

“Hey!” Phichit appears, suddenly, between them, as Yuuko tugs Yuuri backwards. “What was that for?” The boy’s voice has risen in anger, drawing all kinds of attention; District One materializes at Plisetsky’s shoulder, his face impassive. Phichit takes half a step back.

“Yuri,” Otabek Altin says, coolly, without looking away from Phichit.

Yuuri startles, looking at him in confusion, a response on the tip of his tongue when Yuri Plisetsky says, “What. I want to talk to the hag.”

“She’s not,” Phichit starts, only to stop short when Altin narrows his eyes. Yuuko rests a hand on Phichit’s shoulder, a glare on the other two.

“What do you want with Sara?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you, Four,” Plisetsky snips. “You and your boyfriend are fucking pathetic.” Yuuko goes white, but yanks Phichit behind her before the younger boy acts on the furious noise he splutters out.

“You- _You—_ ”

“Can this wait?” Yuuri interrupts, stepping up in front of Yuuko. Up close, Yuuri sees the way pure rage coalesces in Plisetsky’s eyes, thinks he hears the grinding of his teeth as his jaw locks into a hard line. Clasping his trembling hands behind his back, Yuuri wills himself not to cringe under the force of the younger tribute’s anger. “Don’t you see Sara every night?”

Plisetsky’s eyes narrow, and his hand flies up. Yuuri braces himself for impact, but the younger boy just stabs the point of his finger into Yuuri’s chest, his face going dangerously close to Yuuri’s, and says with a hiss, “You’re _pathetic_. You think you can just blow a kiss like your mentor and everyone will fall at your feet? You should just die already, _Katsuki_ , because there can only be one Yuri in that arena. It’s not going to be _you_ , got it?”

Bewildered by the sudden threat, Yuuri presses his thumb into his own wrist and takes a deep breath, fighting the urge to take a step back. He can feel his hand trembling still, and digs his thumb in a little harder. Swallowing, Yuuri raises an eyebrow at Plisetsky and forces a smile. “Okay. Is that all? Because we’re busy, and you’re interrupting us.”

Plisetsky crosses his arms, and next to him, Altin shifts his weight. His lips move as he murmurs something in Plisetsky’s ear, too low even for Yuuri to catch, but whatever he says causes Plisetsky’s scowl to deepen. “Whatever, I guess,” he mutters, then in a harsher tone, “Fine, whatever, let’s go.” He glowers once at Yuuri before spinning on his heel, catching Altin by the arm and storming away. Letting out a shaky exhale, Yuuri looks back at his allies, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What was that about?” Mikhail mumbles, raising an eyebrow at Sara, who shrugs.

“I don’t really talk to him,” she admits quietly. “He always glares at me when I try.”

“Are you okay?” Phichit whispers to Yuuko, eyes worried. Her face still pinched, Yuuko forces a smile and nods.

“Fine, Phichit. Ready to race, Yuuri?” She looks over at him, blinking away the last of the ghost in her eyes before offering a warmer smile. “I’ll kick your ass.”

Yuuri breathes in once, and out. _She can do it. So can you_ , he tells himself as he smiles back. “Ready." 

Later, as they stepped into the relative privacy fourth floor, leaving Plisetsky and Sara alone in the lift, Yuuko says, “I don’t think he’s quite as cold as he pretends to be.” Looking over, Yuuri raises an eyebrow at her curiously.

“Who do you mean?” 

“Well,” Yuuko says, thoughtfully tapping her cheek. “I was talking about Plisetsky, really. But I guess Altin, too.” At his dubious look, Yuuko shrugs and smiles, her expression soft. “It’s the way they acted with each other, didn’t you see? I wouldn’t have thought Plisetsky stops that attitude for anyone, but he did. And Altin looks at him like he hung the stars.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually just trying to churn this story out now. Finalizing the actual Games part is gonna be hell.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd; all fault lies with me. Let me know if there are glaring mistakes anywhere!
> 
> Not gonna lie, typing Viktor and victor in the same sentence is trippy.


End file.
